The agreement that one of the majority unions of the National Police Corps, SUP, signed in August with the Desokupa Club to give defense courses staff thousands of agents has caused the flight to other union organizations of numerous members who reject the agreement with an entity that uses extrajudicial methods to resolve alleged illegal occupations of homes and which is linked to the extreme right.
The most famous case has been that of Marilo Valenciathe police officer who competed for the general secretary of SUP in the last elections who has been in office for more than a decade, Monica Graciathe person who has signed the agreement with Desokupa. Valencia was affiliated with SUP since she joined the body in 1999, she was its top official in the province of Malaga since 2017, she was the general secretary in Andalusia and a member for four years of the Police Councilthe joint participation body in which officials and the Ministry of the Interior are represented. Totally in disagreement with that agreement, he left his lifelong union and has joined another, the Reformist Police Group (ARP), a minority, but with one of the now most progressive proposals of the body.
“With this agreement it has been transferred a red line that I am not going to allow as the national police,” he tells Public Marilo Valencia. Videos in which the leader of Desokupa, Daniel Esteve, appears encouraging people to throw stones at the police who were protecting the Congress of Deputies during a demonstration, the extrajudicial methods that his organization uses to evict houses supposedly illegally occupied and their ideological links They constitute, in his opinion, crucial aspects that should have been taken into account before signing a collaboration agreement for that entity to train police officers.
“The National Police that we represent is inspired by some public service values and we have the duty and obligation to comply and enforce the law, lines that are enormously different from the methods used by the Desokupa company that belongs to the same owner of the Desokupa Club,” stressed the provincial executive of the SUP of Malagaled by Mariló Valencia, in the statement it issued in August to announce its resignation after the agreement that the state leadership of the union had signed.
That resignation was followed by the union’s withdrawal, once the state leadership refused to renounce an agreement that its general secretary had described as “historic” in the video that was disseminated from the act of signing the agreement with the Daniel Esteve. “This is a plus, a plus. We have a problem in the streets, there is a excessive violenceauthority has been lost, colleagues are increasingly at risk. And what we want with this is for them to feel safer,” proclaimed Mónica Gracia before an exultant Esteve, who announced self-defense courses with 18 trainers and 500 police officers each.
The departure of Mariló Valencia dragged other colleagues along, although the agreement with Desokupa had already caused a crisis in Galicia, where the provincial committee of A Coruña harshly criticized an agreement of which they said they felt ashamed, and in Basque Countrywhose secretary of organization resigned from office due to “ultra drift” of the union. According to Valencia, more than 200 members of all levels have already left the SUP and have gone to other unions since the signing of that controversial agreement.
The union for freedom of association and against the gag law
The former member of the Police Council decided to join ARP and, after her, more than twenty former SUP militants in Malaga have done the same, although they have already called her colleagues. other Spanish provinces to express your intention to follow the same steps. His new union is much smaller, he has no representation on the Council, they don’t even let him advertise on the bulletin boards. police stations assigned to the union organizations, but she was convinced, she says, by their “negotiating, prudent” way of working, and that they have won relevant cases in the courts for the defense of the rights of police officers.
ARP is the union that has stood out in the defense of free unionization of more than 74,000 civil servants that form the National Police Corpsto whom for almost four decades They are prohibited by law from joining a union that is not made up exclusively of police officers, something that does not happen in any local or regional security body. He has also stood out in defending the reform of the Citizen Security Law, popularly known as the gag law, a reform against which the majority of police unions have demonstrated, as well as in his favorable position on cannabis regulation.
The national spokesperson for the Reformist Police Group Manuel Soler, has assured this newspaper that there are “a lot of movement” in Andalusia, Galicia, Guipuzkoa, Valencia and Barcelona of SUP members at all levels, including the highest level (commissioners), who are joining their union, or are about to do so, after the agreement with Desokupa.
“That is a sign that they are understanding the message, that things must change, that we must fight for freedom of association. And this project, which is progressivereformist, with a vision of the future, it is being seen that it is the right place for thousands of police officers, who, after 40 years, need different negotiating tables, a new union system in which they have the same rights as the rest of the State officials,” explains Soler, who years ago was also a member of SUP.
Desokupa courses have not started
SUP sources have assured Público that they are unaware that there are members of that union who have dropped out due to the agreement with the Desokupa company. According to a spokeswoman, who cites the case of one who had a “PSOE card”, those who have left have done so for reasons more policies. “We do not want to politicize this under any circumstances. We are police officers and we do not see the ideology of the CEO of the company with which the agreement has been signed. All of this has been misunderstood and politicized,” he emphasizes.
The truth is that training courses self defense that were announced at the beginning of August with the signing of the controversial agreement have not yet begun, according to SUP sources, who emphasize that the union is a simple “connection” between the company that is going to provide them and its members, who are offered only a discount when paying the fee charged by Desokupa.
In a statement released days after the controversy caused by the signing of the agreement with Desokupa, the Unified Police Union indicated that its objectives include “intervening to guarantee the adequate level of training “This fact has been carried out by this union for more than 40 years, not only through agreements with universities, but also with those public or private centers that could benefit officials with their work. police. All this, in order to promote and maintain the prestige of the police institution, guided exclusively by the benefit that these actions can bring to the entire police community,” SUP stated.
However, those who have criticized the agreement with Desokupa consider that the training that police officers need has been done and can be done with other professionals. Mariló Valencia remembers, for example, that when she was secretary of SUP in Malaga, her provincial committee organized self-defense courses that were taught professional experts in that discipline. “We need courses to be organized in many areas, because training is scarce, although it has increased in recent years, but without the need to resort to companies like Desokupa,” he emphasizes.
Attacks to the left
In a video published on YouTube to respond to the strong controversy unleashed following the signing of the agreement with the Unified Police Union, the person in charge of Desokupa announced that they were going to train 100,000 professionals, including agents and prison officials, and then He retaliated like this: “the left of this country works this way. They have tried to get all their shit out today, all your garbage“. Already during the campaign of the last general elections, This same organization displayed a large banner in the center of Madrid with the following motto: “You (with the photo of Pedro Sánchez) to Morocco. Get out of the Moncloa“.
Mariló Valencia avoids assessing whether police union organizations such as Jupol, the majority along with SUP in the Police Council after the last elections, or her previous union, with the signing of the agreement with an organization such as Desokupa, have entered into a drift towards positions of the far right. His position on the matter is blunt: “we do not have to play with ideology, because that way we are losing the values of the police, who are the ones we owe.”
In his opinion, it is an error that the union demands of these organizations have recently been limited to asking for salary equalization with other police forces. In addition to demanding a salary increase, we must demand more security and better means, Valencia emphasizes: “you cannot go bare-chested to an intervention. We need vests, extendable defenses, vehicles.”
Their new union, ARP, maintains that police officers will only be able to achieve job and salary improvements if they enjoy union freedom that allows them to defend their interests in the participation bodies where decisions are made. the advances for all State officials and where their presence is now prohibited. “If they do not have the tools to negotiate, the improvements they are asking for cannot be achieved,” says Manuel Soler.
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