:format(jpeg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gfrmedia/YBCTGWQKSJEPDGQVDIJOEGUVPI.JPG "Police disperse a protest against LUMA Energy on Fortaleza Street with smoke bombs and pepper spray.")
Agents Police Bureau Smoke bombs were thrown around 9:00 pm to disperse the marchers Strength As part of an anti-federal protest LUMA Energy.
The Uniformada members secured several plastic dividers to prevent people from moving towards the main entrance of the Governor’s House. Peter Pierluzzi When people started throwing cans and other things.
Because of this, the police ordered the demonstrators to leave the area, showing that they had assaulted the agents. As some continued to throw objects, officers dispersed the crowd with smoke bombs and pepper spray.
Until then, the demonstration was held peacefully in which political figures, environmentalists, activists and artists participated. Earlier in the evening, police intervened with Alberto de Jesus Mercado, an activist known as Tito Kayak, who was handcuffed and taken out of the area for currently unknown reasons.
During the operation, some agents arrested several protesters, however, at this time, the reason for their intervention is unknown.
After forcing the protesters to retreat, security-clad officers formed a perimeter at the junction and did not allow anyone to enter the area. Some protesters returned after a few minutes and continued the protest.
Hundreds of people came to La Fortaleza to demand the cancellation of the LUMA Energy contract, which has been in charge of the island’s electricity transmission and distribution network since last year. The city claims the outages recorded in the past two weeks have left hundreds of thousands of subscribers without power; Fires at substations caused several power outages.
During this period, failures were also recorded in critical transmission lines. Similarly, several generation units at the Aguirre and AES plants suffered damage as a result of problems with some of the main transmission lines.
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By written statement, the Commissioner of Police, Antonio Lopez FigueroaHe pointed out that the agents implemented an evacuation plan after being attacked with “screwdrivers, cobblestones, glass bottles, rotten eggs and saucepans”.
López Figueroa added that they arrested one of the protesters who was caught with a shovel.
“Once the protesters started hurling objects like projectiles at the officers, the police issued warnings to them on several occasions. The uniformed crowd decided to disperse by not responding to the calls of the agents and continuing to throw objects which endangered the safety of the protesters and all the agents,” the commissioner said.
“The police officers at the protest are residents of Puerto Rico who feel and suffer just like any other person. They are there to ensure that everyone has the right to demonstrate in a safe environment without incident. The attacks against my police officers tonight are reprehensible. Also, they harm other demonstrators. could have resulted,” López Figueroa asserted.
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Police officers were also contacted New day To confirm that the demonstrators threw glass bottles, rocks, stones, cans and eggs at them. They also said that many protesters created an improvised barricade by tearing down several metal trash cans from the San Juan Municipality.
New day He asked for a reaction Police Bureau About the night operation and the number of prisoners, but the efforts failed.
