LA PAZ – Three National Police officers were arrested in Oruro, a city in western Bolivia, for allegedly drugging and raping a young woman, media reports said Sunday.
The three officers were turned over to prosecutors and an internal investigation has been opened by police, the La Razon newspaper reported, citing FELCV law enforcement unit director Col. Franz Ticona said.
The young woman was friends with one of the officers and went with him to a club on March 2, meeting with the other two suspects at the establishment.
The suspects allegedly put a substance in the young woman’s drink, waited until she was unconscious and then took her to a house, where they raped her, Ticona said.
Investigators determined that the woman was sexually assaulted.
The incident is just one more black mark on the National Police, whose members have been involved in numerous attacks, rapes, corruption schemes, drug trafficking and other crimes, with high-level officers involved in some cases.
Two police officers were arrested in November in the central region of Cochabamba for raping a woman in front of her 2-year-old son.
Since taking office in 2006, President Evo Morales’s administration has tried to reform the National Police, which has about 37,000 officers.