Dominican court bans public use of nicknames for police operations and legal cases

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court has banned law enforcement in the Caribbean country from publicly bestowing nicknames on police operations or court cases, a common practice in the region.

Until recently, Dominican officials had used an array of colorful words to describe such cases in public: larva, medusa, falcon, chameleon and anti-octopus.

The name of the so-called “anti-octopus” case was born after a prosecutor investigating government corruption suggested that the brother of a former president had tentacles reaching into all government agencies.

The so-called “larva” and “falcon” operations centered around drug trafficking, while the case nicknamed “chameleon” was an investigation into allegations including fraud, embezzlement and identity theft.

Meanwhile, an operation nicknamed “medusa” focused on officials accused of corruption, including the country’s former attorney general, Jean Alain Rodríguez.

Attorneys for Rodríguez recently asked that the court ban the public use of nicknames for cases and police operations, saying that it violated his dignity.

The Constitutional Court agreed in a ruling Wednesday, saying such nicknames should only be used as a secret strategy and not for public knowledge, adding that they violate a suspect’s presumption of innocence and could affect a judge’s impartiality.

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