Commander of Chile's Carabineros police resigns in disgrace

[rabs]

Gen. Eduardo Gordon presented his resignation to Pinera on Friday. The civilian sourpuss is Rodrigo Hinzpeter, Pinera's Interior Minister and the top law official in te government. There is speculation that Hinzpeter could be the next to go.


There was an article by a blogger yesterday that said Gen. Gordon had ordered altered a traffic accident report involving his son in July of last year. The son smacked his vehicle into the car of a 22-year-old student at a red light in Santiago and he took off. A passenger with the student was able to jot down the license number. The young lady said Gordon's son later gave her the equivalent of 600 dollars to fix the damage to her car.

When Carabineros discovered that it was Gordon's son, he was advised and his son's name was taken off the accident report.

The story broke yesterday, and Gen. Gordon was summoned to La Moneda this morning where his 37-year career came to a crashing and ignominious end.

Gordon denied having the accident report altered; he said he was resigning because of health reasons and "of pressures" on the Carabineros institution recently.

A lot of that pressure came from the slaying of a 16-year-old youth last week by a Carabineros noncom during a demonstration. The Carabinero has since been drummed out of the institution and is jailed. Nine other officers were sanctioned by Gordon, including a general.

There has also been heavy criticism of the heavy-handed way Carabineros attacked student and labor demonstrations recently. Today, Carabineros detained about 30 high school students who were demonstrating.

Just another episode to increase Pinera's bile before the weekend.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Good, he's a crappy police commander. They don't need brutal, self-centered crooks there now.

Things are far too important to let people like him jamming things up, riding herd over the country.

That's some sour puss on Hinzpeter. I'll bet they'll miss his charisma.

[Peace Patriot]

2. You'd think they would've changed that military hat design--so reminiscent of Pinochet!

In fact, I looked twice at this pix of Gen. Gordon, wondering what was being keyed in my memory.

This... (top photo)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet

...haunting resemblance (more than the hat, but the hat triggered it).

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's every bit as vicious as the Rebel Flag in the U.S. It's blatant flaunting of a system

which broke the hearts, lives, minds, spirits of human beingss permanently.

It should have been put behind them long ago, despite the fact there are still fascist supporters of that evil living in the country to this day.

Their own US-conceived, implemented, supported Reich. It needs to be condemned in the strongest terms, and buried publicly.