Cops Behaving Badly: The Verdict in Venezuela

…is GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY as charged for three commanders of the Metropolitan Caracas Police (and eight of their subordinates):

At noon on Friday, sentences were handed down for three commanders and eight officers of the Metropolitan Caracas Police, involved in the events of the coup d’état on April 11, 2002, on Baralt Avenue.

[…]

Commissioners Henry Vivas, Ivan Simonovis and Lázaro Forero received the maximum sentence of thirty years; six of the eight officers received sentences of 16 to 18 years, and two will go free because it could not be proven that they were at the scene of the crime. They have already spent five years in prison, which will be discounted from the respective sentences. Those sentenced will remain in their current cells.

Translation mine.

To get some idea of just what these guys are guilty of, I recommend you see “Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre”, available as a torrent here; watch out for the idiotic trolls in the comments section. You can tell them by their casual use of the word “dictator” and their ignorance of the separation of powers in Venezuela. (Please note that Chavecito is currently in Iran on bilateral business, and therefore has no standing at the trial or sentencing at all. You might also want to see how that “Chávez-owned supreme court” refused to even recognize the events of April 2002 as a coup d’état at all, and still, shamefully, has not changed its mind to this day.)

Here’s a small sample of the movie, showing clearly that the police were at fault for at least some of the deaths that occurred that day, and how:

Justice is now served, at least for some. The intellectual authors of the coup, however, are still at large. You can probably find them in Miami; all the scummiest flotsam from Latin America has a funny way of washing up there. Must be those ocean currents I hear so much about!