A multi-recidivist thief, widely known by the local police on the coast, a resident of Calella (Maresme), was recorded by a television camera while taking a rucksack on Barceloneta beach. Once arrested, he admitted to journalists that he had stolen more than 200 times on Catalan beaches and that he does it to survive. The thief moves from his town, Calella, where he is well known to the police, to Barcelona to operate on its beaches, although now the Urban Guard has also registered him. In total it accumulates more than 100 complaints.
Jaume, as it is said, in mid-August he appropriated the backpack of some tourists while they were swimming on Barceloneta beach. Bad luck wanted a television program from the Cuatro channel to record him and he was immediately arrested by the agents.
Just as quickly as he was caught, he was released after reporting him and returning what he had stolen to the victims. The amount of the theft did not exceed 400 euros, insufficient to start the arrest process, police sources point out. Despite this, the thief assured that he had spent six months in prison.
The repeat offender is widely known in Calella, where he lives and began his criminal adventures selling drugs in the winter and stealing items from tourists and commercial establishments during the summer. The control imposed on him by the agents of the tourist town of Maresme, where they identify him every time they locate him, forced him to move towards other tourist towns until he arrived in Barcelona, ??where he is now also clearly identified
Precisely in Barcelona, ??the new municipal government has an impact on dealing with the large number of criminals who move to the city in the summer, as the Deputy Mayor for Security, Albert Batlle, admitted in the recent interview published by La Vanguardia .
In front of the cameras of the program Focus, Jaume admitted that he has been involved in crime for a long time and that he has sold drugs and even committed some violent robberies in homes, and that with the small thefts he does along the coast he can get about 30 euros a day.
The offender admits without objection that he often escapes arrest because the victims do not want to initiate legal proceedings and believe that they have some responsibility for neglecting their utensils. Only for recidivism, according to police sources, can a sentence of two years in prison be requested, but the dispersal of files by several courts, depending on where the crimes are committed, prevents this most of the time. This judicial dysfunction is also well known by criminals, which is why when they accumulate arrests in one point they move to other “virgin areas”, in their case, the beaches of Barcelona.
In Calella, through social networks, merchants are well aware of the thief who has become famous in Barceloneta and regret that like Jaume there are hundreds of thieves who commit petty thefts in establishments. A situation which, in addition to generating a great feeling of insecurity, ends up harming the customer because the cost of the theft has been reflected in the selling price of the product since the beginning of the season, as stated by digital Calella.com . Those affected are demanding tougher sentences for repeat offenders, since once they are arrested “after a few days they come around here again getting angry at those who have reported”, as a local waiter points out.
