A man was injured in Pradera, Valle del Cauca, in the midst of alleged police abuse. Uniforms who wanted to search him attacked him with his pistol when, apparently, he refused the procedure. The incident occurred in the José Manuel Ramírez neighborhood.
The apparent abuse of authority was recorded in a video captured by an inhabitant of the sector. In the images, the injured citizen, identified as Juan José Valencia, is seen struggling with the uniformed men, who were traveling on a motorcycle.
“They are taking him away and he is not doing anything,” says the person who records, while the police try to hold Valencia. The man resists the judicial procedure and seconds later manages to flee. That’s when one of the uniformed officers activates his firearm.
The agent fires two shots before Valencia falls wounded to the ground. The scene is shocking: one of the shots destroys his leg at the ankle. “He broke his foot,” says a woman who was on the site between screams.
WEEK He spoke with relatives from Valencia who confirmed his transfer to the Hospital Universitario del Valle (HUV), in Cali, due to the seriousness of the injury. In addition, they told their version of the alleged case of police abuse.
Juan Camilo Vidal, cousin of the man injured by the police, says he resisted the procedure for fear of a false positive. He denounces that uniformed officers from the municipality of Pradera have implanted false evidence to accuse people of illegal possession of firearms or drug trafficking.
“My cousin went out to run an errand and the police stopped him to do a search, normal, he gives him the search, and then he wants to take him, to which he resists (…) they wanted to take him without need . They wanted to make a false positive, they wanted to call reinforcements to take him away in the patrol, because they said that my cousin had supposedly shot them,” Vidal said.
About Valencia, he said that “He is a 26-year-old hardworking boy who works in the fields”, father of two children -one nine years old and the other six years old-, and who has a wife, who currently accompanies him in the hospital. Vidal says that they had to take his cousin to a care center by their own means.
The Valle Police Department spoke briefly regarding what happened: “In the last few hours, in the municipality of Pradera, a sector known as Planeta Amarillo, a person was injured during a police procedure. The injured person was immediately transferred to a care center, guaranteeing his rights and respect for his personal integrity.”
Additionally, the institution stated that they will initiate the “Pertinent disciplinary investigations to clarify what happened.”
