translated from Spanish: Carabineros are declared illegal in seizing and destroying the merchandise of street merchants

Repeatedly during this year several cases of confiscating and subsequent destruction of products that were offered on the street by street traders, which appeared to be a standard Procedure of Carabiniers, but which would have m flat according to the courts. It was the Court of Appeals of Rancagua that recently, and after a unanimous ruling of the Second Chamber of the Court, established that this proceeding falls to a double illegality on the part of the police forces, when they were carried out without being authorized by law or by judgment firm. In that line from the court, police personnel were ordered to be the prefecture of Colchagua and the Second Police Station of Carabineros de Santa Cruz to refrain from any act of destruction of the goods of street vendors. That measure was justified in the judgment as follows: ‘the penalties laid down in the legislation subject to the infringement, cited in the third recital in the preamble to that judgment, provide for only the penalty of fine (up to 3 UTM)”. Moreover, “commissioning as a sanction must always be imposed by a Court”. In the particular case which gave rise to the application for protection, the court stated that Carbaineros’ actions “directly affected the right of ownership of the person concerned in the seizure and subsequent destruction of the asparagus that the person sold on the road Carabineros exceeded his powers, when he should have only filed the respective subpoena party, so that a local police judge, with the background of the case, had resolved what is in law.”

Original source in Spanish