The Mossos d’Esquadra have launched a new app for iOS and Android that aims to be “a police station in your pocket”. Many of the procedures that now require face-to-face may be optional and the services will be expanded in the future. The goal is for it to be a practical element of proximity. The Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, has indicated in the presentation that the project contemplates gradually incorporating services “until it becomes a true virtual police station”.
The app, which can be used in Spanish, Catalan, Aranese and English, has a large direct call button to the 112 emergency telephone number, a list of services such as finding the nearest police station, making an appointment, contacting issues of sexist violence and even a service for recovered objects that can be seen in photography and over which ownership can be claimed from the same phone. One of its key functions is the notification of exceptional public security notices, such as attacks, serious incidents and emergencies.
In a second stage of the application, now downloadable from the App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android), two of the most common complaints that can now only be made at the police station will begin to be incorporated: loss of documentation and family authorizations for minors who go abroad, which today represent a volume of 30% of the efforts of the Oficines d’Atenció al Ciutadà.
In any case, Elena has stressed that the fact that certain services are incorporated into the mobile will not imply that face-to-face personal attention will be reduced, which will always be available to citizens who require it, although depending on how the procedures work with the application. you can decide to resize them.
The chief commissioner of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Eduard Sallent, has linked the launch of the application with the technological transformation project with an eye on the year 2030, a horizon that must be reached with a workforce of 22,000 police officers. “It is an instrument – he pointed out – that allows us to relate to citizens more directly, be more accessible and build a gateway to a new way of providing security and services to citizens”.
The Mossos d’Esquadra app does not require user identification. It only requests authorization for geolocation in order to provide the nearest police station service, which will not work if it is not authorized. It does not have an option to directly report a situation by simply pressing the button. The identification is done through the channels offered by the app itself when the user wants to make a complaint, mostly by email.
The software also has an informative part dedicated to the areas of security advice, hate and discrimination, terrorist alert -with the updated level and what it means- and calls for access to the body, which allows monitoring of a request. Another part of the application has been dedicated to the informative notes prepared by the Department of the Interior itself and also direct access to all its accounts on the different social networks.
