The spokesperson for the Professional Union of Port Police of Las Palmas, Artemis Casañas, spoke this Friday on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero to explain the conflict between the Local Police of Arrecife and the Port Police of the capital of Lanzarote, which has resulted in up to eleven fines from the locals to the port agents. As a result of this situation, they are considering taking legal action.
The union denounces fines and vehicle detentions of the port authority by the Local Police of Arrecife, which have led to several disagreements between both institutions. "I don't know the background of why. There is a kind of dispute over some roads that are of public port domain, service areas of the port, therefore they are roads owned by the Port Authority, not the Arrecife City Council," indicates Casañas.
During his radio intervention, Casañas explains that the local agents consider that "the police vehicle cannot use" the V3 lights, which are blue and typical of police forces, on those port roads, which they understand as municipal according to their opinion", but which the port agents defend as roads owned by Puertos del Estado.
"In the end we have a duty to the citizens and it is our main objective, so this type of conflict does not benefit the users of the port or the citizens at all," explains Artemis Casañas in the morning show Buenos días, Lanzarote.
For this reason, the Port Police "has even placed some signs indicating that it is land of public port domain to avoid this type of confusion." However, the port agents "have more than eleven complaints for using the V3 signals."
Casañas explains that "every time a Port Police car is stopped, which is in the exercise of its functions, and is detained there for 20 or 40 minutes, as they have told us, the public service is being obstructed," added the spokesperson for the Professional Union of Port Police of Las Palmas. In addition, he denounces that it is "excessive and abusive to file up to eleven complaints for the same issue", he continues "with the first complaint it was already enough".
He also added that even "the port police have been threatened with being arrested." From the Professional Union of Port Police of Las Palmas, the Local Police is urged to "calm, sanity and that it be the resources that have to speak and not the use of this conflict, which I don't even know if it is personal".
In this sense, he assures that the majority of sanctions are given by the same two agents and that "Local Police controls are set up inside the port, which we understand do not have sanctioning legitimacy".
In addition, he warns of the risk that some of the port agents of Arrecife may be arrested. "They threatened to arrest him and moved a detainee van to intimidate him. In Arrecife they reached that point on two occasions."
"It is the only port where these cases are occurring in all of Spain. In fact, our national unions are amazed" with the situation in Lanzarote. "Unfortunately, this is becoming a national disgrace," he concludes.
