Prime minister Luís Montenegro has announced today that the government will be reinforcing PSP metropolitan commands in Porto and Lisbon with 400 new police agents (200 for each).
After an “extremely productive meeting” with the mayors of both cities – Pedro Duarte (Porto) and Carlos Moedas (Lisbon), Mr Montenegro conceded that security “was a dominant topic” in the conversation.
The whole subject of security, however, is ‘complicated’, in that authorities have been at pains to stress that crime generally in Portugal is ‘low’, and that this is a traditionally safe destination. Therefore, to address the need for so many new police agents, requires careful presentation.
There will be “a reinforcement of patrol action by the PSP’s intervention corps in these two cities”, says Lusa today, in areas “of greater involvement from a criminal standpoint”.
The PM also announced that there is to be a “reorganisation of services performed” at police stations in Porto, Lisbon and Setúbal, in order to free around 500 current agents for “patrol functions”.
Lusa says no more, but this decision comes on the back of a horrific daylight rain on a jewellers’ story in Almada (Lisbon district), beamed over last night’s television news. The victim of this ‘smash and grab’ that netted over €50,000-worth of goods in the space of just seconds is still being treated in Garcia da Orta Hospital for injuries she received by flying glass. But the violence of the images as two masked men burst into the shop from the street, brandishing a sawn-off shotgun show how terrifying certain areas of metropolitan centres appear to have become. The men left the shop, with their loot, still holding the shotgun. PJ police are now trawling street-sited CCTV cameras, to see if they can get a lead on which direction these men took, and how they made their getaway. For now, there appear to be no clues as to the men’s identities.
Source material: LUSA/ Correio da Manhã