Alarmed by the increasing insecurity in his city, closely linked to problems of poverty and drug addiction, the mayor of Funchal, Pedro Calado, of the PSD is calling for the streets of the city to be patrolled by the army and/or the GNR.
A few days ago, quoted by Jornal da Madeira (JM), the mayor spoke during a campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of drugs that took place at the EB PE Brazão de Castro school, in Galeão, in São Roque, about the “closure of abandoned houses and which pose a danger to the population”.
“Just walk the streets of Funchal, any time of the day or night, and I challenge anyone, I often do this round myself, to find a police officer. He finds one for the Banco de Portugal, but he is the only one
And he defended that “allowing other entities, namely the armed forces of the army and the GNR to do this surveillance and inspection work on the streets of Funchal, because “we know that this intervention is already a deterrent to the presence of many of these people on the street”.
“If there are no agents and there is no capacity to supply these agents to the municipalities, then have other entities do these patrols on the streets. We have the military, we have the GNR, we have other military entities that can do this patrol.” .”
He would later explain to journalists: “Just walk the streets of Funchal, any time of the day or night, and I challenge everyone, I often do this round myself, to find a police officer. There are police officers for events, but they are services that are paid, paid, but there is actually a lack of police. Solutions have to be found. When there are no agents and there is no capacity to provide these agents to the municipalities “Let other entities be able to patrol this on the streets. We have the military, we have the GNR, we have other military entities that can patrol this. And this patrolling is a deterrent to the presence of many of these people on the streets.”
For Pedro Calado, it would now be necessary for the state to decentralize powers to the municipality so that it can solve the problem on its own.
In a conversation with DN, the regional opposition leader Sérgio Gonçalves, chairman of PS/Madeira, found the idea “absurd” because “we do not live in a state of siege or in a military dictatorship”.
According to him, while leading the Chamber of Funchal (2013-2021), the PS tried to create a municipal police. But, he assured, that effort was always in vain, as the PSD majority in the city council rejected the proposals.
For Sérgio Gonçalves, the short-term solution is the creation of a municipal police. However, there are structural reasons based on the economic model of the Autonomous Region, a model based on tourism, which revealed high poverty risks, especially during the pandemic.
Source: DN
