Peruvian congresswoman Catherin Palomino has introduced a bill that would impose life imprisonment on police officers who commit serious crimes by exploiting their position, duties or the resources the state gives them to fight crime.
Palomino, a member of the Juntos por el Peru (JP) caucus, filed the proposal after a series of bribery, kidnapping and extortion cases implicated officers of the Peruvian National Police (PNP) in recent months.
In the text of the bill, Palomino said this kind of conduct breaks the law and betrays the Constitution, because the officer puts the tools the state entrusted to him at the service of crime.
What the bill changes
The proposal does not create new crimes. It modifies Article 46-A of the Penal Code, which already imposes a heavier sentence on public officials who take advantage of their position to commit crimes. What changes is the consequence for a specific group of offenses.
If a police officer, while carrying out or overstepping their duties, commits homicide, murder, femicide, contract killing, kidnapping, extortion or aggravated corruption, among other crimes, the penalty would become life imprisonment, with no exceptions.
The bill also covers other scenarios. One involves officers who, while serving prison sentences, order crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking or extortion from behind bars.
Another targets officers who commit sex crimes, homicides or robberies while posing as public transport or motorcycle taxi drivers or fare collectors. In both cases, the sentence could rise by up to a third above the legal maximum.
Public distrust cited as justification
The bill also draws on figures from Peru's National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI). According to that data, cited in the bill's explanatory statement, corruption and crime are seen as the country's main problems, with 58.7% and 50% public backing respectively. The figure given the most weight in the text is that public distrust in the PNP reaches 82.9%.
The cases cited in the proposal
The bill's explanatory statement gathers several recent episodes to justify the change. In June 2026, prosecutors arrested nine police officers from the Vitarte station, accused of demanding bribes from drivers on the Carretera Central in exchange for not issuing traffic tickets.
According to the document, some of those detained forced drivers to withdraw cash from ATMs because they were not carrying money. That same month, five more officers were arrested in Ica for allegedly charging money in exchange for irregular permits to skip duty.
The text also cites the "Los Incorregibles de San Juan de Miraflores" case from August 2025, in which nine PNP members, eight of them active officers, were investigated for planting drugs and weapons on citizens and then charging them to be released.
The bill also references the confirmed seven-year, six-month sentence against police officer Paul Galarza, who belonged to a gang dedicated to extortion and pressured victims not to report the crimes.
Another episode cited is the kidnapping of Colombian businessman Juan Mauricio Padilla in Lima in August 2025. According to the document, police officers took part in the case and allegedly used resources tied to their official role to demand around 400,000 dollars in cryptocurrency.
The list also includes the "Los Charlys de Pucallpa" network, in which two active police officers received eighteen months of pretrial detention in June of this year for kidnapping and extortion carried out through fake police interventions.
Earlier proposals on the same issue
The bill is not the first to address this issue. It recalls two earlier initiatives: one from 2023 that sought to raise sentences for police and military personnel who collaborate with criminal organizations, and another from October 2025 concerning illegal possession of firearms.
It also mentions a proposal from August of this year aimed at repealing Law 32735 so that crimes committed by police and military personnel would return to civilian courts. According to the document, the change to Article 46-A would not remove authority from the Public Prosecutor's Office or the Judiciary, and would not require additional state spending.
