One week, that is the time that the reinforcement of the Local Police for the summer months has lasted, agreed between the unions and the Human Resources area of the Santa Cruz City Council. This was denounced by the five union organizations with representation in the local security force (Intersindical Canaria, CC.OO., CSIF, Asipal and UGT). According to these organizations, the Local Police Headquarters has “arbitrarily” decided to eliminate the agreed reinforcement of agents from Monday to Friday, but also during weekends, which, in their opinion, will make Santa Cruz an “unsafe” city due to the impossibility of meeting the demands of the population.
The unions describe as “unsustainable” the situation of the workforce in the face of the summer, which is already short in itself, and that with the relevant vacations of the agents it will be further diminished if possible, and with it the service that they can offer to the public.
The organizations assure that the response they have obtained from the Headquarters is that the agreed increase “is no longer necessary”, based on the decrease in the density of circulation and road traffic. Some data that the representatives of the unions describe as “notoriously false”, since “this is something that has not happened for years, since from the measurements chosen at random and that have been published through the social network Twitter by the communication office of the Local Police, a considerable increase in vehicle traffic can be deduced, so that, where there are usually around 24,000, we are close to 30,000”.
The organizations detail that the number of local police officers is around an average of four motorist agents and four patrol vehicles per morning, afternoon and night shift, for a population of 208,688 inhabitants and a city of 150.56 square kilometers, with a total workforce of 337 agents in its entirety, which is reduced by 50% during the summer period. They recall that the number of agents per population ratio should be at least 439 and argue that, with these numbers, events that may occur in the city cannot be efficiently covered, qualifying the situation as “unsustainable”, as there are not enough personnel to attend to citizen demands. The unions go further and assure that if their claim is not met, “we can assert that Santa Cruz will be an unsafe city.”
