The police dispersed the demonstration against LUMA Energy on Fortaleza Street with smoke grenades and pepper spray

During the operation, some agents arrested several protesters, although it is not known why they intervened at this time.

After the protesters were forced to retreat, officers in protective gear formed a perimeter at the intersection and did not allow anyone to enter the area. Some protesters returned a few minutes later to continue protesting.

Hundreds of people came to La Fortaleza to request the cancellation of the contract of LUMA Energy, a consortium that since last year has been in charge of the island’s electricity transmission and distribution network. The town’s claims date back to a series of outages recorded in the past two weeks, which have left hundreds of thousands of subscribers without power; Many of the power outages were caused by fires in substations.

In this time period, failures of important transmission lines have also been recorded. Likewise, several generating units at the Aguirre and AES plants were damaged as a result of problems with some of the major transmission lines.

Through written statements, the Police Commissioner said, Antonio Lopez FigueroaHe noted that the agents activated the evacuation plan after being attacked with “screwdrivers, cobblestones, glass bottles, rotten eggs, and pots.”

Lopez Figueroa added that they arrested a protester after he was caught with a shovel.

Once protesters began throwing objects resembling projectiles at officers, police issued warnings to them on several occasions. By not responding to the call of customers and continuing to throw objects that endanger the safety of all those present, whether protesters or agents, the military regime took the decision to disperse the crowd,” the commissioner added.

The police officers at the demonstration are Puerto Ricans and they feel and suffer just like everyone else. They went there to ensure that everyone had the right to demonstrate in a safe environment, without incident. Tonight’s attacks against my police officers are reprehensible. Moreover, he could have harmed other protesters,” stressed Lopez Figueroa.

He also called the police officers new day To confirm that the demonstrators threw bottles, cobblestones, cans and eggs at them. They added that a number of protesters tore down a number of metal trash cans from the San Juan municipality to form a rudimentary barrier.

new day Request a reaction police Office About the night operation and the number of detainees, but the attempts were unsuccessful.