Police Chief Manuel Perez Sanchez announced yesterday he was investigating the possibility that officers and patrolmen were connected to the misappropriation of confiscated or recovered stolen vehicles. While the police chief had stated yesterday that no penalties would be levied against those who returned such vehicles, the Presidential legal advisor, Cesar Pina Toribio, said that those who helped themselves to the stolen vehicles should be processed through the judicial system. He was firm in stating that such incidents should never happen again. According to El Caribe, the executive is demanding that those individuals who had the recovered vehicles in their possession be prosecuted. In an apparent change of heart, presumably due to public pressure, the police themselves announced they would conduct their own investigations as well, potentially leading to charges in civilian courts for those who illicitly made use of the vehicles. The police chief told reporters that a careful enquiry is being undertaken to see how the vehicles made their way to high-ranking officers after their owners reported them missing. He also said that any lower ranks that acted in conjunction with the auto thieves would be submitted to the judicial system. Finally, the head of the National Police said he would let the press have the names of all of those implicated in the matters as soon as they themselves had determined the seriousness of the offences.
Meanwhile, a UASD professor told reporters from the Listin Diario that she now fears for her life after publicly stating she would sue the person who drove her vehicle for nine months after it was stolen last December. Mary Almanzar has been a member of the University Council for 16 years and is a former president of the professor’s union at the state university. She told the Listin Diario that she was able to identify her vehicle because of some stains on the seats, despite the fact that the chassis number had been filed off and the windows tinted. Almanzar said her unease stems from the fact that the “uniformed delinquent” knows who she is, while she does not know who he is. The professor said that when she went to the police and spoke to official spokesman General Simon Diaz, she was referred to the police inspector general, Major General Jose Luis Dominguez Castillo. He told her that if she had already waited for nine months, “she could wait two or three days more.” What is even more exasperating to the woman is the fact that, because she only had the minimum insurance required by law, she was forced to continue to make payments on a vehicle she could not even use.
In a story right next to this one, the Listin Diario announced that the police would not be handing over the recovered vehicles right away. The press release said that the vehicles would be subjected to a chemical process “to restore the original numbers and establish ownership.” Owners are being asked to provide all of their documentation on the vehicles.