In the RAC1 program The Competition, the Òscars, Dalmau and Andreu, sometimes connect with Radio Latina Internacional from the Can Jardí de Rubí industrial estate, a city to which they add the addition of the Catalan Detroit.
Well, the joke that compares the municipality of Vallès Occidental with the city of the United States is no longer valid. The latest crime report for the first half of the year from the Ministry of the Interior places the city at the forefront of crime reduction, compared to the same period of the previous year, with 8.1%. An improvement that is also seen in towns such as Santa Coloma de Gramenet or Sant Cugat del Vallès, but which contrasts with the increase in crime in the city of Barcelona, ??L’Hospitalet de Llobregat or the whole of Catalonia.
What happened to Rubí? Maybe they have found the formula that allows them to become an oasis in the face of the upward trend?
“Neither miracles nor magic formulas. What there is is a lot of work and a very committed workforce that is helped to be police on the street and that, when faced with a complicated situation, they opt for the resolution without complexes, because those in charge will support them”.
Mayor Toni Rodríguez is speaking from the round table in his office. In January of last year, the one who had been in charge of the general police station for criminal investigations and a confidant of Major Josep Lluís Trapero was fired from his position and sent to Rubí.
Overnight, Rodríguez went from directing the central and territorial criminal investigation services of the Mossos, in which he opted for specialization in the investigation of sexual assaults and already warned of the expansion of marijuana, to be in charge of the hundred cops at the police station. Something about the step through criminal investigation must be noticed in Rubí.
Basically, what they have done, he explains, is to change the way of coordinating services that are less visible to the citizen and the analysis of information. An operation that is very similar to what he already did in the central services.
“We don’t expect the criminals to act to investigate them. In a way, we expect them. We work to find out where those who are from Rubí are hiding, but, above all, where they come from when they arrive and who they get together with when they have activities outside our municipality, because we know that sooner or later they will come here with them” , explains Rodríguez. It is, he adds, gathering valuable information that allows both the investigation unit and the furas, the civilian agents specialized in public security, to be very effective when we detect an upturn. Information that is also shared with the patrols visible to the neighbor to make everything an “orderly and effective” set.
Give an example. In the summer they suffered a wave of shoplifting that was resolved with two servings in prison for repeat offenders. “You don’t have to stop longer, but better.”
The Ministry’s statistics are more generous than those of the Mossos, which place the decline in complaints in Rubí at 6%. The explanation is logical. Some and others measure the complaints under different headings, and hence the discrepancy in the figure, but not the clearly downward trend.
“In Rubí we don’t do anything that many of the police officers in similar municipalities don’t do. For real. We had a stroke of luck and things turned out very well for us”, Rodríguez insists.
The responsibility at the head of a municipality of 80,000 inhabitants, but with a density in the center similar to that of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, has allowed him to deal one-on-one with the citizens. And he warns: “We must stop treating the citizen childishly, trying to make him see that everything is fine and that it is only sensations that prevent him from walking peacefully at night in certain places”. And he adds: “Nothing happens to say that we reach the figures of 2019 and that, without forgetting that we live in a privileged place in the world, crime will still grow. We need to be honest and let the citizens feel that we are working”.
Rubí’s police chief defends another way of relating to police statistics, in which the feelings of insecurity that condition people’s day-to-day life are emphasized more. “The data can neither be an excuse nor explain everything”, but the data is there. And, for example, eight robberies with violence and intimidation in public spaces were reported in May, compared to 15 last year. Thefts have also decreased in Rubí, as in the rest of Catalonia. In April, if round figures are mentioned, it went from 98 complaints last year to 67 this semester.
The mayor emphasizes the coordinated work with the local police, a “fundamental” part of the structure of security and prevention in the municipality. As happens in other localities, at night, the shift leaders exchange stations to share everything that happens in the city.
Another value added to Rubí, the mayor assures, is the large associative fabric that the municipality has and the capacity and strength they have to organize campaigns and put themselves at the forefront of a claim. “They are essential interlocutors to measure the temperature of what is happening in the street, because they resist giving up the space for coexistence to incivility and understand that complex problems require realistic solutions.”
Some streets where the furas, the policemen who specialize in keeping watch without being seen and who have memorized the faces of the usual criminals in each area, roam the streets. In Rubí they are also there, and they have a story to tell that justifies the presence of the rubber duck that illustrates this page.
During a public health operation, it was agreed that the order to access would be “rubber duck”, but the person in charge of giving the go-ahead shouted: “yellow duck”. Despite the laughter, the intervention was a success, and the policeman was given a rubber ducky that has since appeared camouflaged in photographs of the still lifes of material seized in police ferret operations. A kind of mascot that has become a sign of identity for a police station that withstands the onslaught of criminality with something more than good luck.
