“We have to create conditions and strategies” – deputy superintendent
Deputy Superintendent Aurora Dantier has stressed that the PSP must “make peace” with the neighborhoods on the outskirts of Lisbon, in light of the unrest triggered by the killing of Odair Moniz by an agent in Cova da Moura (Amadora).
Speaking to Lusa after taking part in the first congress of the Trade Union Association of Police Professionals (ASPP/PSP), at the Faculty of Law in Lisbon, Dantier – who coordinates the 11-division neighbourhood policing teams in the Lisbon Metropolitan Command (Cometlis) – expressed her conviction that the PSP will once again be well received in Bairro do Zambujal and Cova da Moura, but admits that it will take time.
“We have to appease. We have to make peace and create conditions and strategies. We can’t label all the people who live in the neighborhood as criminals. There is a group that gives the neighborhood a bad name, but most people leave in the morning to go to work,” she said, acknowledging that the situation ‘is still very hot’ and that it is necessary to ‘return to previous levels’ in the relationship between the police and the local community.
For Aurora Dantier, from the disagreements that took place in the following days in Bairro do Zambujal, where Moniz lived, to the tense atmosphere in Cova da Moura, where he was shot dead, the PSP’s response must be to “go back into” the neighbourhoods and talk to the people who also need the police’s help.
“You have to talk to the people in the neighborhood and you have to listen to them. Was there a serious incident? Yes – but the institutions are working. What about the rest? Don’t other people need the police? Don’t they need protection? Yes. Are we going to abandon them? We cannot. We have to accompany those people who need police intervention,” she said, warning that if this isn’t done, the tension between police and the community will persist.
Stressing that the burning of cars and rubbish bins that has been taking place, “is no longer a social problem” related to Bairro do Zambujal or Cova da Moura. Those responsible are “pure criminals”, says Dantier, guaranteeing that police remain on the ground and on the lookout for people taking advantage of the situation to perpetrate vandalism.
The 59-year-old police chief would not be drawn on political positions surrounding the case, but stressed that “people should be more measured in what they say”, noting that in the last two weeks “there have been a lot of people who have taken advantage of the media spotlight and then ended up inflaming certain issues (…) That was very bad. The PSP has to put out the fire”.
Dantier also admitted that there is resistance in the PSP to proximity policing in these communities, “because not everyone understands this role of being close to people in a different way”, especially among older officers, who were “formatted for a repressive police force”.
She equally acknowledges that “if police don’t participate within the community, there are other groups and other phenomena that occupy the space” (suggesting these would not be preferable).
When asked about the reasons that limit the expansion of the PSP’s proximity policing activities, Dantier pointed to the shortage of human resources and greater number of skills that officers are responsible for, “which result in a more reactive than preventive intervention in the face of problems.
“We have to do everything”… this infers ‘reductions on all sides’. Police “are not elastic. Either more people come in or we’ll have to make an assessment of what we have and we will probably have to stop doing some tasks,” she concluded.
Source material: LUSA
