At the plenary session in March, Badalona City Council will approve a protocol for action by the Guàrdia Urbana (GUB) against illegal occupations. A pioneering regulation that sets the criteria so that agents can deal with the different situations of illegal occupation of properties that arise in the municipal area.
With this protocol, the government of Xavier Garcia Albiol aims to increase police effectiveness in the fight against illegal occupations, a key complement to the promotion of the newly created Illegal Occupation Department that already has an office to provide care and advice to those affected. . When faced with a complaint, the City Council activates different levels in a transversal manner and mobilizes other council departments that may be involved, such as Territory or Social Services, but also Security, empowering the police to carry out an investigation. action that promotes the eviction of the home.
With the regulation, as detailed by the mayor, “the agents of the Guàrdia Urbana will enjoy legal security” since there is no clear regulation in this regard. “The scope of action of the police is very diffuse, the Mossos have some powers and the local police have others,” Albiol quotes.
The protocol has the main purpose of homogenizing and adapting the actions of the GUB to the current factual reality and current legality, which is why it sets the objective of improving the police response to this type of crime, guaranteeing the most appropriate action in each of them. the interventions.
The new regulation regulates from preventive action, which they consider a strategic axis to reduce criminal activity specific to this problem, to operational action that provides agents with the knowledge to act in the different scenarios that may arise in cases. of illegal raids, with the aim that police action is carried out with all legal guarantees in the field of criminal or administrative law. Furthermore, they consider it important that citizens know that, in the event of an illegal occupation of their property, they must inform the GUB in the shortest possible time.
According to the regulation that the absolute majority of the PP in the Badalona City Council will allow to be approved with complete certainty in the next plenary session, it is the responsibility of the police to identify the property with the greatest possible detail, identify the occupants and the owners, as well as the witnesses who had witnessed the events or the security guards and alarm systems. Subsequently, the property will be evicted and measures will be applied to prevent it from being raided again and the report will be drawn up. It is essential in these cases to prove the existence of the flagrante delicto and that the squatters have not established a domicile, so it is decisive to act quickly.
Regarding the debatable legality of the regulation that hypothetically arises from supra-municipal administrations, Albiol assures that he has “consulted with judges, prosecutors and police officers,” and what is intended is not to violate the law but to make it “an instrument for agents to act much more effectively” in the face of illegal occupations. “Sometimes, the squatters know the law better than the police themselves,” the mayor suggests.
In this sense, Garcia Albiol claims to have kept the law in mind when drafting the regulation but also that “unfortunately what this law is currently doing is protecting the occupants from the owners”, a situation that also generates disaffection in the agents. Furthermore, he understands the protocol as a tool for agents to dispel doubts in the event of unemployment.
