Mayor Jaume Collboni chaired the Barcelona Security Board this Monday afternoon, with the presence of the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena. A periodic meeting that serves to share the state of the city in terms of security and that serves to take stock of the latest figures, in this case, the crime statistics for 2023. A bad, very bad year in terms of security, with a general increase in all types of crime, in relation to 2022. Everything increases, especially sexual assaults, scams and everything related to drugs, but police activity also increases a lot, which multiplies arrests, identifications and operations , both from Mossos d’Esquadra, Barcelona Urban Police, National Police and Civil Guard.
At the end of the meeting, behind closed doors, a ten-page dossier with a selected summary of the data was distributed to the media. A statistic in which especially the Department of the Interior continues to compare with 2019, before the pandemic, and a particularly dark year in terms of figures, with crime rates that in fact caused the implementation of some of the plans that Today they are still in force as Tremall.
The plan that was once devised by Commissioner Carles Anfruns, in his time at the head of the Barcelona police region, and which consisted of police working on multiple recidivism with a new operating system that would make it easier for judges and prosecutors to sign more prison entries.
In any case and beyond the strategies, the 2023 figures have not accompanied the police activity that has multiplied on the street by the two main protagonists, Mossos and Guardia Urbana. Complaints have grown by 8.6 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. An increase of almost nine points in just twelve months that translates in surveys into responses from Barcelona residents who continue to place insecurity as their main concerns. Although it is true, as in recent days the city’s police officials have recalled that although the increase in the first semester was enormous, almost 13.7 percent, the figures recovered in the second, reducing the growth to 4.2%, managing to balance that increase to that 8.6% that worries the Mossos team led by commissioner Montserrat Estruch.
The meeting took place at a complicated time and reflects the also complicated situation in the relationship between the Mossos leadership and the Barcelona Urban Police. Last month, La Vanguardia reported on the open institutional crisis between the two organizations due to the dissolution of the joint investigation teams led by the police and urban guards and which were working especially well in terms of drug trafficking and the dismantling of points of sale and narco flats. .
A crisis that no one denied and that led to the calling of an emergency meeting at City Hall with the presence of Eduard Sallent, chief commissioner of the Mossos and the mayor Pedro Velázquez, leading both delegations. A tense meeting in which it was agreed to “lower the tension” and try to bring positions closer together. For this reason, several working groups were created that had to debate and propose a new way of coordinating in matters such as domestic violence or drug trafficking. The intention was to arrive at the Security Board meeting with closed and agreed proposals, but it has not been possible.
At the moment, there are no joint investigation groups, except those directly requested by a prosecutor or a judge in very specific matters. And although the urban guards continue to sign as secretaries on the reports prepared by the regional reporting unit of the Mossos, they no longer participate in public health investigations that are carried out exclusively by the Catalan police.
This situation did not go unnoticed at the board meeting and it was precisely the Deputy Prosecutor of the special anti-drug service of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Barcelona, ??Gerardo Cavero, who asked to speak to defend the model of the joint investigation teams that he assured had worked. extraordinarily well in recent times. One of the arguments put forward by the Catalan police leadership to eliminate these joint teams is the “lack of judicial guarantees” due to the fact that the urban guards do not have the category of judicial police.
Precisely in the statistics provided by the communications offices of the Interior and the City Council, the increase in crimes related to public health is highlighted. By 5.9 percent. In this section, this increase is directly related to the unstoppable and recognized activity in all levels of the city of the Regional Public Health Research Unit that depends directly on the Barcelona region, which is located in the Ciutat Vella police station, and that in 2023 it closed 186 substance points. A work done hand in hand with the Urban Police, its plainclothes urban crime groups and the investigation groups, whose function is now up in the air because they are no longer part of these joint teams, by express decision of the Mossos leadership.
Statistics maintain theft as the city’s star crime, with the highest incidence, since it represents 48% of all crimes reported. Compared to last year, thefts grew by 6.5%. In 2023, 100,944 were reported compared to 94,776 the previous year. A problem that comes hand in hand with the so-called multiple recidivism that has been found in Catalonia, in Spain, a crack in its legal system that allows the author to act with great impunity, over and over again, until he either gets tired and changes scene, or manages to a rare admission to preventive detention.
The five most active multi-recidivists in the city accumulated a total of 228 arrests in 2023 alone. Police officials, and here the initiative is from the Mossos, have a list of 526 people classified as multiple repeat offenders who have been charged with a total of 6,169 crimes in total.
Another crime that has increased significantly in 2023 is robberies in establishments in the city, with a growth of 40%. A real outrage if you take into account that they went from 1,878 to 2,636; although the authors of the press release highlight that the number of detainees linked to this modality has also grown by 62%.
The scourge of sexual crimes continues to rise unstoppably, although police officials highlighted the best percentage of crime resolution, which reaches 83% and has a lot to do with the increasing specialization of investigators and better decision-making. complaints. Complaints grew by 24%, going from 883 to 1,099. It is true that there is greater awareness on the part of victims to report, but it is also indisputable that attacks grow exponentially and especially those in which the perpetrator belongs to the victim’s trusted environment.
This careful and special treatment of victims of sexist violence has its translation in the ten police stations of the Mossos in the so-called Comprehensive System of Attention to Victims, which in the case of the Catalan police includes victims of hate crimes, discrimination and sexist violence. The Urban Guard, for its part, opened this year two offices in Ciutat Vella and Nou Barris also aimed exclusively at collecting this type of complaints. And although it is waiting to see if the Interior allows it, as other Catalan municipal police do, to monitor and protect some victims, for the moment it is limited to collecting complaints. About 900 in the nine months they have been open, and many of them provoked by the urban guard itself after identifying sexist violence in actions that were not linked to this crime.
