Without National Police in the streets of Logroño during the morning of Christmas Eve

There is a lack of National Police officers on the street. This is what the police union JUPOL denounces, from which they assure in a conversation with Rioja2 that this lack of troops has become evident, especially during last Christmas Eve and Christmas. In fact, on the morning of December 24, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., there were no National Police cars on the streets of Logroño. “That day there were two indicators (two vehicles) assigned to citizen security in Logroño, but there were also three detainees who had to be transferred from the courts to the Logroño prison.” And the two vehicles, instead of patrolling through the capital of Rioja, had to be “immobilized” for these four hours in the Logroño courts waiting for the three detainees to give statements in order to transfer them back to the Logroño prison, so “During these four hours, there were no signs or patrol cars from the National Police in Logroño.” During the night of Christmas Eve, a hundred interventions were carried out in La Rioja. At the beginning of the night those interventions were mainly health emergencies. Then altercations on public roads due to fights, assaults, alcohol poisoning and robberies.

During Christmas Day a call sign, a National Police car, patrolled the streets of Logroño. “The normal thing, due to the number of inhabitants of Logroño, is that there are at least two vehicles, but by reducing the number of troops there are not enough agents to take out two vehicles,” they denounce. Usually, these shortages of personnel used to be alleviated through overtime and changes in the agents’ shifts. Until now. “We have been dealing with this problem since the pandemic ended and the agents are fed up, so they no longer want to work overtime or accept those last-minute shift changes.” The result, a security deficit in the streets of Logroño.

A lack of National Police officers on the streets of Logroño five years after the staff was expanded by 30. “There are no troops on the street because they are in the offices,” they censure. And the reduction in personnel of the National Police has become more effective in the citizen security unit, and more specifically in the Citizen Assistance Group (GAC), the agents in charge of patrolling the streets of the city. “It cannot be that there is only one National Police vehicle on the streets of Logroño. Now more crimes are committed, there are more fights and they are not like before, now baseball bats, knives, razors are used… An example. “In the fight a few days ago in the Parque del Carmen in Logroño, the colleagues who went there could not ask for reinforcements because there were none, that day there was only one National Police car on the streets of Logroño.”

And one of the problems for this police union is what they call “conductions.” “Before the pandemic there was a specific unit to transfer prisoners to testify in court or to the emergency room, transfers that immobilize the units for several hours. “This unit was removed and has not been re-enabled.” Problems that are known to the La Rioja Headquarters. “Every three months, the main unions meet with their superiors, the September meeting was of no use, in the end good words but nothing more.”

And what will happen on New Year’s Eve? “We still don’t know because they haven’t given us the quadrants, but it doesn’t look very good.”