The Valencia City Council (PP and Vox) has decided to build new ponds under the bridges of the Turia Garden “to avoid illegal settlements” of homeless people. It will also reinforce surveillance in the Turia Garden with a greater presence of Local Police agents and with the installation of new cameras in order to “increase security” in this part of the city.
This was announced this Monday by the councilor for Security, Jesús Carbonell (PP), and the second deputy mayor and councilor for Parks and Gardens, Juanma Badenas (Vox), after the meeting they held to address this issue, as reported. the council in a statement. The meeting was also attended by the head of the city’s Local Police, José Vicente Herrera.
Badenas has assured that the meeting has had the objective of “studying and planning measures that serve to increase the security of the parks and gardens” of the Valencian capital and has pointed out that this type of calls will be held “on a quarterly basis.”
“One of the first measures that will be adopted is to double the surveillance that is being carried out by the Local Police in the Turia River Gardens, but we are also going to increase the number of security cameras in the riverbed and in other places of the city so that our gardens are much safer,” he commented.
The Local Police councilor explained that there are currently twenty cameras already installed and highlighted that along the entire old Turia channel there is already the necessary infrastructure to install new ones and place “those that would be missing to reach the Cabecera Park”. “We are analyzing all possibilities to make this a reality as soon as possible,” he said.
Jesús Carbonell has also indicated that the police units destined to monitor the Turia Garden will be increased to “deepen police control” in this enclave, as he noted, “a place where residents should feel safe and which the Local Police already has special attention”.
From the opposition in the City Council, the spokesperson for the PSPV-PSOE, Sandra Gómez, has considered the measures announced by the representatives of the local executive “to avoid settlements on the river” as “aporophobic and racist” and has pointed out that they have “the only objective to persecute the most vulnerable people” who, “on the other hand, are suffering from the dismantling of social services that the PP and Vox have carried out in these six months – of government -.”
Gómez has announced that his group will expand the complaint it has presented to the Ombudsman “for the dismantling of social services” in Valencia. “I have to say that I am once again ashamed of the government that represents the city today” because “it openly and clearly persecutes and denigrates people who are in a situation of poverty,” he said in a statement.
The socialist spokesperson has stated that this group “annoys the right”, which she has criticized for acting “without any type of sensitivity” and “without offering any alternative so that these people can spend the night” safely in the coldest months. “. She added that the municipal executive “the only thing she wants” is to “separate and hide homeless people instead of looking for solutions that help them not have to sleep outdoors.”
“The PP and Vox councilors meet to harass them because the poverty they are suffering does not bother them but rather that they can disturb them while they walk through the city gardens,” he added. Gómez has criticized that the mayor, María José Catalá (PP) “has not only drastically cut all programs and measures to help the most vulnerable people but now sends the Police to evict them and persecute them,” he pointed out.
