On Tuesday, the Government will approve the restructuring decree of the general direction of the Police. A document that regulates what the new structure of the Mossos d’Esquadra should be. A project started by the previous chief commissioner, Josep Maria Estela, and to which Eduard Sallent has put the finishing touches. A structure that must be used to define what the police should be like and to specify its functions. Beyond the growth of the entire command structure, which is clearly multiplying, a couple of elements stand out. The telephone intervention system, which until now was under the umbrella of the general police station of the judicial police, now depends on one of the new police stations, that of information and communication technologies.
This change of guardianship in the system of telephone interventions, which are the taps that the police carry out as part of an investigation and always with judicial authorization, was not there in the first draft of the decree. Precisely on Monday afternoon, the management, with Sallent at the head, held a day in the auditorium of the central police complex of Egara, in Sabadell, to explain the project to the commanders.
The decree has circulated in recent days, so anyone who has been interested has been able to read it. In fact, there are commands that warn of the risks of this change of guardianship of phone taps, as they leave the shield of the judicial police to go to this new police station of information and communication technologies that will assume the competence of all the systems and technologies that police officers work with. This transfer will mean that the secret court hearings can be shared by more people. The argument given by those responsible for the new decree is that, despite the fact that the judicial police request practically 95% of telephone interventions, the Internal Affairs Division (which now becomes a police station) or Information in their investigations. For this reason, since it is a “transversal” service, it is assumed by a police station that provides service to the whole body, but which will receive judicial interlocutories that are, on many occasions, part of secret proceedings.
The decree, beyond these new police stations and areas that we will specify later, determines in writing that those in charge of decentralized services, for example, and in fact it is primarily intended for the heads of criminal investigation areas, “must inform the highest regional commands, directly and in the way they consider most appropriate, of the most relevant facts or investigations related to their activity”.
It is true that this point begins with the warning “unless legally prevented by a judge”. But, in any case, it remains in writing that the heads of research must inform the head of the region of what they are doing, in case they are asked to do so.
There are not a few who see in this statement a dangerous crack in the armor of judicial investigations of all kinds. On the other hand, those responsible for the decree say that it is a question of responding to an old request from the heads of regions, who were often questioned by mayors about certain issues about which they had no information because those responsible for the investigations only raised updates to the chief inspector of the Criminal Investigation Division, or to the commissioner who was above him.
There is another element that immediately stands out as we begin to read the 132 pages of the new decree, and it is the way in which the general direction of the police is growing. At the helm there is still a politician, currently Pere Ferrer, who has actively participated in the decree, and who sees how his general management becomes a macrostructure with a cabinet, the police directorate, the general commissariat for institutional relations, prevention and mediation, which I already had, and internal affairs and inspection and analysis, which pass from division to general police station.
We must add the sub-directorates of administration and service and human resources, which some commands defended should be transferred to the operational part of the body, but which remain under the political baton of the director.
A tenth virtual police region is added to the nine territorial regions. The police station for public safety is also created, which must strengthen and unify the street work of the patrols, in addition to strengthening and improving everything that has to do with assistance to the victim.
In short, a new decree that, far from simplifying the organizational chart, increases it to the point that its implementation will require 309 commands, including majors, commissioners, quartermasters, inspectors and sub-inspectors. Doing the numbers, 109 more than there are now.
