The absence of cameras in the Mossos pushes agents to record videos on their own


The Department of the Interior For years he has been studying equipping agents with the Mossos d’Esquadra single-person cameras that allow recording the most complex actions. But he hasn’t done it yet. In a context in which any intervention by the police can be recorded by citizens’ mobile phones – and then these videos can also be broadcast on social networks, sometimes fragmented and decontextualized, plunging the police into public trials that can also end up being real trials – there are more and more Catalan police officers who, while waiting for the Ministry of the Interior, have decided record images on your own in the proceedings, according to the sources consulted by EL PERIÓDICO. They are not the majority, but they open a thorny debate.

“They buy GoPro cameras and they look for a little life as they can”, detail police sources. “Or they use the mobile phone and they place it discreetly in the pocket of the uniform”, add others. They are home systems that replace the absence of official cameras and that sources from the Ministry of the Interior, consulted by this newspaper, refuse to criticize despite the fact that they reason that the most appropriate thing is that these recordings be made with all the guarantees. The Urban Guard, for example, has distributed single-person cameras to record complex actions and has drawn up a protocol that, as highlighted yesterday, Monday at a press conference Albert Batllehead of security Barcelona’s town hall, guarantees that its use will not be generalized, it will be reserved for complex actions and the agents will not have access to the video files. The files recorded by the Urbana cameras are encrypted and cannot be manipulated by the police, thus preserving the chain of custody since they are graphic documents that can end up in a trial or as part of an internal affairs file. for a case of malpractice.

“We have a budget to buy video cameras for the Mossos, we believe it is a useful tool and we are already doing tests to decide which model and how we will implement them,” they warn from the Ministry, without going into assessing whether or not instructions will be given about of the use of devices while the official ones do not arrive.

With the images that the Mossos capture with cameras very similar to those of the Urbana, only when they use the Taser electric guns does something very similar happen. But with the images that some agents of the Catalan body take on their own in interventions in which they feel exposed, no. It is, then, an unregulated practice that can lead to internal problems. In this second case, the police officers do have access to the images and also obtain them without any collection protocol that, among other things, stipulates that the citizen must be informed if they are being recorded.

“They prefer to expose themselves to being prosecuted than to have their ass in the air in a trial & rdquor ;, reason Catalan police unions, who also avoid criticizing this self-management and recall that for several years they have been demanding that the Ministry do the same as announced yesterday by the Barcelona’s town hall.

Cameras with stun guns

In June 2018, the Government introduced Taser electric guns and drafted a protocol that committed their use to the recording of a video that recorded the situation in which the police had had to use this weapon, which was approved in the Parliament in a decision not exempt from controversy that included the opposition of entities such as iridia either international Amnesty. To comply with this self-imposed obligation, the Mossos bought a camera – similar to the ones that the Barcelona Urban Police have now acquired – that they linked to each stun gun, to have a sequence of each incident in which a Taser was activated.

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“Then we were told that this was only a first step and that single-person use cameras would arrive, unrelated to the pistols,” he recalls. Nacho Alvarezspokesman for Mossos d’Esquadra Union (SME). “But that was four years ago and the cameras still haven’t arrived.” “There is nothing that provides more legal certainty to an agent than the recording of a camera”, emphasizes the spokesman for SAP-Fepol, Toni Castejon. “We have nothing to hide & rdquor ;, she remarks. And reality shows, continues Castejón, citing the cases of European police officers who have equipped their officers with these cameras, that “cases of assaults on police officers” but also “cases of police malpractice” plummet when officers have of these devices.

“It’s a fundamental tool,” he adds. David Michaelspokesman for Union of Police of Catalonia (SPC). “We celebrate that now the Urban Guard also has it but we do not understand why Batlle, who was also director of the Mossos when we already claimed them, did not consider it appropriate to buy them and now yes”. “Yesterday’s news is that of another police officer who also goes ahead of the Mossos in providing cameras to their agents,” he laments Albert Palacespokesman for USPACwhich defends that if there are agents of the Catalan body who have opted for self-management, it is because “justice” has already shown, in recent cases, that it “accepts these recordings” in a trial in which the agents can face sentences of many years in jail.


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