PSP bans strangulation techniques after assault on Cláudia Simões
The police corporation changed internal rules to ban pressure on the neck during arrests, after an officer was sentenced for assaulting a Luso-Angolan woman in 2020.
PSP bans strangulation techniques after assault on Cláudia Simões
The Public Security Police reviewed operational guidelines to prevent officers from resorting to manoeuvres that compress the neck area of citizens during operations. The change was enacted by the national director of the force in 2021, two years after a police officer was punished for beating a woman during an arrest in Lisbon.
Carlos Canha, the officer in question, was sentenced to five years in prison with the sentence suspended and ordered to financially compensate the victim with six thousand euros. The incident dates back to January 2020, when Cláudia Simões, a Luso-Angolan national, was subjected to violence by the officer.
The new internal regulation, made public by two journalistic initiatives and cited by Público, establishes that it is forbidden for members of the force to apply force to the cervical region using any part of the body. It should be noted that the top administrator of the PSP never admitted fault in the subordinate's conduct, stating, after viewing recordings of the incident, that it was a "police officer carrying out his obligations".
The Lisbon Court of Appeal determined that Canha approached the victim from behind, pulled her hair, pressed her spine with his knee and struck her head on the pavement. The magistrate added that the assailant took advantage of the handcuffs placed on the woman to continue to assault her with punches to the face inside the vehicle that was taking her to the police station.
The updated version of the Permanent Execution Norm, from 2021, establishes that arrested individuals must be transported in cellular vehicles to the police station or to the nearest hospital unit, with few exceptions. If transport in a patrol car is authorised, the officers who participated in the arrest cannot drive nor sit as a passenger in the same vehicle. The regulation also prohibits the use of instruments or impact manoeuvres against restrained individuals and limits the use of coercive force.
In parallel, the new norm facilitates the use of baton strikes. Officers are authorised to, whenever the situational circumstances justify it, strike citizens with batons on body areas considered to be intermediate risk, provided that the threat is assessed as moderate. The journalistic investigation indicates that these strikes can cause injuries of varying severity to the joints of the limbs, the anterior area of the trunk and the pelvis.
Source: Correio da Manhã
Source: Correio da Manhã