The police intervention must be perfectly documented, whether it is the commission of a crime or an administrative offense

MADRID, 20 May. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Ministry of the Interior has ordered through a new protocol that more vigilance be established on bladed weapons to combat crime associated with phenomena such as youth gangs. This is a new instruction, apart from the one announced yesterday where a new classification of this type of organization was collected and it set out to reinforce police mechanisms to more effectively detect calls for violent actions on social networks.

The department headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska announced this Friday that it has approved the "Protocol of action of the State Security Forces and Bodies regarding the control of white weapons and other dangerous instruments for citizen security", whose objective is to reinforce control over this type of weapon and prevent its use.

It has been issued through an instruction signed by the Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Pérez, which "unifies criteria to control the use of this type of weapon on public roads, spaces or establishments throughout the national territory."

From now on, the actions and seizure of the weapons must be perfectly documented, whether it is the commission of a crime or an administrative infraction. The protocol also determines the information that must be recorded in both cases. The agents will collect the action of the person responsible, the damages caused to citizen security, the environment in which the events take place, as well as the characteristics of the weapon and related images.

These types of measures have been announced when there have been four murders linked to youth gangs in Madrid alone so far in 2022. At the beginning of the year, both the Interior and the Government Delegation already announced more police presence to combat this problem.

The objective of the protocol is to establish guidelines so that the security forces and bodies collect in the police reports all the evidence necessary for the complaint; promote permanent training programs to improve police response; complete and strengthen actions aimed at preventing the use of white weapons; and promote collaboration at the local and regional level with institutions and territorial entities.

"The instruction warns of the threat to citizen security posed by the possession of knives and other dangerous instruments," according to what the Interior said in a statement. In addition, it recalls that the Weapons Regulation establishes the "absolute prohibition of carrying, displaying and using outside the home, the workplace, where appropriate, of the corresponding sports activities, of any kind of white weapons, especially those with blades. pointed".

The text urges the Security Forces and Corps "to temporarily occupy any objects, instruments or means of aggression, including weapons carried with a license, permit or authorization" in order to prevent a crime or when there is danger for the safety of persons or property.

The protocol establishes that the intervention of the authorities and their agents will be justified "by the existence of a specific threat or an objectively dangerous behavior that, reasonably, is likely to cause real damage to citizen security and, specifically, to attack the individual and collective rights and freedoms or alter the normal functioning of public institutions.

The instruction asks the National Police and the Civil Guard to increase the training of their agents in the knowledge of Organic Law 4/2015, of March 30, on the protection of citizen security, and the Penal Code in cases related to the possession of knives, to carry out their actions with all the guarantees for the safeguarding of the rights of citizens and their actions.

The new protocol urges the holding of meetings of security boards and also promotes meetings with judicial authorities and the Public Prosecutor's Office to improve and deepen knowledge about the situation and evolution of the various forms of crime related to the possession of weapons, with the aim of set the criteria that should mark the police action.

The State Security Forces and Bodies will also promote contacts with private security companies and personnel who carry out their activity in public establishments, to collaborate both in preventive matters and in defining what should be the first actions after the detection of a knife at their places of service.

This Thursday Interior updated the Police Action and Coordination Plan against Violent Youth Groups, which establishes a new classification of these gangs, establishing mechanisms to reinforce calls on social networks and "messages with a xenophobic, racist or anti-Semitic tendency, or exaltations of violent behavior inspired by hatred of minorities or by ethnic or ideological difference".