- The mayor’s instruction document grants from today onwards these powers to the agents to offer and facilitate the service to the citizens
Officers of the San Fulgencio Local Police will be able, from today, to accept and process reports about criminal offences occurring in the municipality. This was established in the mayoral order issued by the mayor and head of Security, José María Ballester, which states “the obligation, from now on, that the Local Police of San Fulgencio will have to provide this procedure to any citizen in its premises, preventing our neighbours from having to turn to other authorities to raise their complaints”.
Until now, victims of a crime had to travel about 8 kilometres by car to the Guardia Civil post located in Guardamar del Segura, “with the consequent difficulty and loss of vital time that this could mean for the development of the investigation,” said the mayor. To this circumstance, Ballester has indicated that there was the added problem of “the large influx that this post had at times like the summer months, and that, on occasion, results in a long wait to be attended”.
This way, any citizen of the municipality will be able to carry out this procedure in Local Police’s offices, located both in Madrid St., in the urbanization area, and their headquartes building, located in Plaza de la Constitución, 5 at the town centre. For his part, the chief inspector of the Local Police, Cristóbal Rodríguez, specified that these complaints can also be made in situ, “and in the event that the person does not speak the language well, they can be accompanied by another skilled person who can help them to communicate during the process, not needing to be an official translator”.
The mayor informed that this is an operational decision based on the regulation itself. According to the regional regulation for the Local Police (Decree 19/2003 of 4 March 2003 from Consell de Generalitat Valenciana), one of its duties is to participate in the purposes of the Judicial Police, which, as indicated in article 547 of the Judiciary Organic Law, consists of providing assistance to courts, tribunals and the Public Prosecutor in the investigation of crimes and the discovery and securing of criminals. Ballester has indicated that the same regulation “establishes that these functions will also be the responsibility, when necessary, of all members of the Law Enforcement Agencies, whether they depend on national or autonomous government, or local authorities, this being the case of the Local Police, depending directly on the Town Council”.
Ballester also specified that once processed by the officers, the reports will be forwarded to the Guardia Civil in Guardamar to continue with their processing and carry out the relevant proceedings, “with the exception of reports relating to traffic and road safety, in which the Local Police is the competent body”. The mayor described this measure as “pioneering” and “very innovative, as we are the first municipality in our area to provide this service to our fellow citizens, and we believe that it helps them enormously at a very vulnerable time, when they have been victims of a crime”.
