“I’m not aware of anything, my mom is in intensive care. “I only saw that my phone exploded.” From a hospital where he accompanies his mother, who is in poor health, Luis Chocobar tells Clarion that he barely heard “in passing” one of the news of the day: that Justice revoked the conviction against him for killing a thief who attacked an American tourist who was walking through La Boca. The ruling also ordered a new trial.
“Ex-policeman,” repeats Chocobar (36), who resigned from Buenos Aires last April 11. “It was tremendous that day, I couldn’t stop crying. I had to return the uniform, the vest, the weapon, the tonfa, the boots. That night I couldn’t sleep a wink, it cost me an egg to make the decision, but beyond the pain, I did it convinced. My parents told me that ‘when they don’t want you in a place and they express it to you all the time, it’s better to step aside.'”
And he expresses: “After what happened in 2017, I was marked as a Buenos Aires police officer. She had the best qualifications, but the worst salary. I was denied three promotions. From officer to sergeant it is twenty, thirty thousand pesos, but for me it was prestige. “Nothing, they always ignored me.”
Chocobar speaks with serenity and poise, convinced of every step he took in his busy life. “That time, when I acted in defense of a tourist, I did it convinced and I would do it again. And now when I resigned from the police I also did it convinced, despite the fact that many colleagues tried to dissuade me,” says this brand new civilian man, who lost more than thirty kilos, He graduated as a nurse and studies Law at UMSA (University of the Argentine Social Museum).
“To starve myself as a police officer, I prefer to do it with jobs that represent today’s Chocobar. I am a worker, I do whatever it takes to bring home the mango,” he confesses.
Today’s Chocobar, as Luis, who lives in Tapiales, says, makes a living from street sales. “I go to Once and buy socks, laces and insoles, which I then resell at a stall that I rent at the Saavedra fair. He feeds me there, I don’t complain, I don’t have anything left over. I also work twice a week in the warehouse of a friend’s haberdashery on Pasteur Street, and, in addition, I collaborate in two law firms (Fernando Soto and Ricardo Galeano), where I do some odd jobs. Know? “I hardly have time to spend with my little son Alessio, who is one and a half years old, but it gratifies me to work and feel respected by those around me, something that didn’t happen in the Police.”
He says that the public support, at different times, from the Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich did not help to have a better time in Buenos Aires. “If they gave me a pass to the City Police, I’m sure I would have another present, but As long as I remained part of Kicillof’s Buenos Aires team, I was a living dead. They had me pretending to be taking care of detainees at the Central Market police station. It’s fucked to be in an environment where everything is a No…And when they denied me days for an exam, that’s when I made the decision.”
And he was lapidary against the leadership of the force that he formed until three weeks ago: “In Buenos Aires they don’t want you to progress, to study, they want you to be a fool, to handle you“.
“A shot on the side of justice…The uniformed men are the good guys and the criminals are the bad guys. Here the Zaffaroni doctrine ends“He says that he did not know anything about the post that President Javier Milei wrote on Monday afternoon.
“The truth is that what I am now finding out about your words gives me goosebumps.”I can’t believe your support. That helps because the new trial, when it is held, will be a headache, because I will have to relive a moment in my life that I don’t feel like, beyond the fact that, as I always said, I acted correctly and I would proceed in the same way again. But apart from the annulment of the ruling, I believe that the Justice’s decision is correct, because not even the three judges agreed.”
Chocobar had been convicted in May 2021 by the Oral Juvenile Court of Buenos Aires No. 2, which found him guilty of the crime of homicide aggravated by the use of a firearm committed in excess of the performance of a duty. He had been given a two-year suspended prison sentence. “The positive side is that you will hear everything again, will examine elements that had not been verified and I think there will be another look, from another angle. Also I’m a different person, I think he’ll catch me better.”
