A mantle of silence covers the death of Issa Muntaila, dejected in Madrid by police shots
Que una persona muera en las calles de Madrid por disparos de policías es un suceso muy poco frecuente, pero pasó el 5 de noviembre y la Policía Nacional reaccionó con extraño silencio. Este cuerpo envía notas de prensa casi a diario, a veces sobre intervenciones menores como arrestos de ladrones en las taquillas de un gimnasio, pero no consideró necesario hacer lo propio en este caso. Tampoco se publicó nada en las redes oficiales donde sí se informó ese mismo día del rescate de varios camellos que se habían escapado de un circo.
And 18 days later the lack of information about this episode continues.The spokesmen of the Superior Headquarters of Madrid have responded briefly to questions from the journalists who have been interested, but have hidden key details: they have said that the deceased pounced on an agent with a “large kitchen knife”, butThey have not shared images of the white weapon or more concrete characteristics.Nor have they specified how many times they shot or wanted to know the identity of the deceased of which they have said that "they do not have the full name".They have reported that is called ISSA M., that he was sub -Saharan and that he was about 40 years old.There are also no photos of him.
The deceased is Issa Muntaila, as the Embassy of his country tells this newspaper, Ghana.To the low attention to his death he has contributed that his relatives have not spoken by him and that the event occurred in a very poor neighborhood in the southern capital of Spain, San Cristóbal.I had been living in the streets for a while and had mental problems.The police knew it because, according to a spokesman, the deceased had a history of four attacks against authority agents in the last two years.According to a neighbor, they once beat him up and left him lying on the floor.
What has been known about the event is a video captured from a balcony.The recording begins at the time of the last shot, so that the previous moments are not appreciated, keys to know if the use of self -defense was justified was justified.But the scene contains indications that the police became unnecessarily endangered.
The facts are the following, according to the brief description that the spokesmen of the National Police Headquarters of Madrid read to the media that are interested: on Friday, November 5 before the 10.00, several residents of the San Cristóbal neighborhood, in the south of the capital, called 091 alerting that they had received threats from a man who walked altered with a large kitchen knife around a health center.According to police spokesmen, after the arrival of four agents in two patrol cars, this person pounced on an agent who shot him in legitimate defense.The other three companions responded with shots at the insistence of the aggressor.
Four bullets hit the deceased.Others were embedded in a red Mazda, a gray BMW and a pair of waste containers.
As seen in the video taken from the balcony, when Munkila received the shots was in a very narrow section of Rocafort Street, at the height of number 92, on the back of the health center.They don't see pedestrians in all that path.
Even recognizing that the sequence is incomplete, an expert in police tactics consulted by the country, Antonio Coque, believes that there are elements to assess that the way of approaching the subject could be more cautious.Coque, a former civil guard with 39 years of experience, gives continuous training courses on police operation.
At the time of shooting in San Cristóbal, says Coque, it is not appreciated that the life of third parties is in danger or the possibility that someone off guard appears on stage.The health center has a back door but is disabled and the housing building of the sidewalk in front has no doors in that stretch."Wasn't it better to make a fence? Negotiated with him? Did all the options exhausted?" Coque asks.
On the other hand, the way of approaching the four agents is not the most recommended, in your view.They had numerical superiority and all carried their guns in sight, which could cause a panic reaction in the subject, which felt threatened: “In such a situation the individual will have two answers: flee or fight.What I teach in my courses is that the first agent approaches with open hands, that the next two go with canes and that the room is the one that undefits the firearm, ”says Coque, who directs the verbal defense Institute Institute.
Another policeman, the director of the Depol Academy, Andrés Ramos, points out that elements are missing to make a trial of the intervention."It is not easy to make an assessment.We are talking about an individual who was out of his bockals and who would not respond to normal persuasion, ”he says.
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In the video, an agent's expletives are heard during the 23 seconds after the shots, while Mundaila lies motionless on the floor: "I shit in your fucking mother", "bastard", "I kill you".Coque believes that they could be constitutive of a crime of vexations.A lawyer who has defended cases of investigated police, José Luis Fuertes, does not appreciate any indication of a crime after watching the video.On the insults, strong observes that they question the professionalism of the agent but believes relevant that "they were issued in the heat of the moment, after a moment of danger to their life".
In the video, agents immediately ask for police radio."Samur, urgent samur," says a policeman.“To the ambulatory.It has been a gun.H50 ″, he says using the police code for the room where the telephoneists of 091 attend.
At 26 seconds, National and Municipal Police reinforcements arrive: "Are you fine partners?".There are soon nine troops.In the second 44 an agent is heard saying: "I almost bursts my head!".
A police spokesman for the headquarters of Madrid told Eldiario.is that the deceased had cornered a policeman and that he had shot after he wound him in his hand with the knife.But neither in that video nor in another recorded by the neighbors that the country has obtained.
Several neighbors have appeared in the media to deny that Mundaila threatened anyone.I was wandering around the neighborhood, they say.According to an assistant to the health center, he stopped swinging the knife in the entrance ramp.Then, according to the witnesses, he went around the building and that was where the police found him.Instruction judge María Belén Sánchez lifted the body and now has the investigation of the facts in her hands.
Use of guns
The Spanish agents study at the Avila Police School the three principles that govern the use of force: opportunity (need to use force), congruence (more appropriate means to use it) and proportionality (intensity of its use).But unlike other countries, the National Police has little regulated their action and there are no proved protocols for each danger situation, according to several police trainers consulted.Nor are video sessions celebrate to extract lessons from past interventions.The need for greater continuous training on tactics and operations is a generalized claim of unions.
The unions have unanimously defended the action of the agents in San Cristóbal.The common thing is that there is a generalized solidarity between those who in their service to the public play the lives and bread of their children.In social networks, some agents proposed medals and others remembered the case of a fallen partner in an act of service in a similar situation, when a homeless person stabbed an agent in Fuengirola in 2014.
But others who have seen the video believe that Munkila is a "new victim of police abuse".The SOS Racismo Madrid Association released on Monday 8 a statement considering that the Police acted disproportionately because Mundaila was a black person: “It is not necessary to look at the United States;Here, at home, the National Police kills racialized people, and then look the other way as if nothing had happened.Why don't our lives matter? ".
Consulted by the matter, another association of rights, Rights International Spain, asks for a rigorous and exhaustive judicial investigation: “Keeping all the caution because the whole scene is not seen, the death of an individual by police shots has to be investigated,listening to witnesses and requesting the security cameras to have the maximum possible information of the full sequence, ”claims Patricia Goicoechea, director of the Association."This seems an enormous obviousness, but we must not forget that Spain has more than a dozen sentences of the Strasbourg Human Rights Court due to lack of sufficient investigation of the allegations of overreach in the use of force by the police".
Little more is known about Munkila's life.His friends of Sub -Saharan origin say he had been living in the streets of San Cristóbal for a season, moving from one corner to another "looking for the sun".
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