Judith Pena | February 7, 2023
The checkpoints are not going to stop crime, what they are going to do is intimidate citizens who stop working every day, assured the lawyer Pedro Sitton after having a bad time at a checkpoint when he was stopped by the National Police if legal reason for it.
The lawyer indicated that these checkpoints lend themselves to police abuse and disrespect for the constitutional guarantees of Panamanians.
Sitton narrated that at one of these checkpoints in the Paitilla area he was arrested after showing his identity card and refusing to hand it over to the police (as the law allows), he was tried to present 5 administrative offenses for trying to explain that he did not had committed no crime.
The lawyer was released after Security Minister Juan Manuel Pino and National Police Director John Dorheim made a call to the headquarters and ordered his release.
He said that this situation is unfortunate, because an ordinary person would have fared worse spending the night in jail without having committed any crime.
