Portugal safety and security Report Wednesday 21^st September 2022

 

If ever there was an apt reminder of the need for beach safety, this was certainly realised last weekend when a total of 17 swimmers were rescued from the sea at Mira beach in Coimbra. Sea conditions were poor at the time.

So far this year there have been over 110 drownings in Portugal, the highest for 5 years with still three months to go. We have now come to the end of the bathing season on the mainland and most beaches are without lifeguards.

In the case of Mira beach most of those rescued were reported as foreigners, although it is not clear if they were tourists or residents.

We repeat the advice we have previously given on this topic and that is to enjoy the beach but at the same time take care when entering the water, having regards to sea conditions. Be particularly aware of the presence of rip currents, as well as when suddenly jumping into cold water, the possibility of not only experiencing a cold ‘shock,’ but also developing hypothermia.

Be aware that the sudden shock of the cold water can quickly impact your breathing, your heart rate and your blood pressure enough so that it can be life-threatening. You are then at a greater risk of drowning. Gasping for breath and a sudden spike in your heart/blood pressure can cause an immediate panic/stress for the swimmer, which impairs clear thinking and decision making during a life-threatening situation.

In another beach related incident this time in Viana do Castelo,  a 3 year old child “was left by the parents sitting on the sand, next to the water, while they went swimming”, having shortly afterwards “found her lying on the sand, possibly after being hit by a wave”. After being assisted at the scene, she was taken “as a precaution” to Viana do Castelo Hospital, confirming that the “child is fine. Parents should not need reminding how to look after their children – it should be common sense.

On Monday the hacker group Ragnar Locker, responsible for the computer attack on TAP at the end of last month, claimed to have published personal data of 1.5 million airline customers. This Monday 19th September 2022, a document with 581 gigabytes of information was released on the Dark Web. The data includes names, addresses, mobile phone numbers of customers, as well as confidential agreements and professional identity cards and information about incidents during operations.

According to the newspaper Expresso, TAP did not give in to the blackmail of the group of hackers, who say they continue to have access to the airline’s computer systems.

We recommend that TAP customers change their passwords and ensure strong passwords are used and that the dame password is not used on any other accounts especially bank accounts.

The Minister of Internal Administration announced yesterday that crime is decreasing this year compared to 2019, a period before the covid-19 pandemic marked by confinement, but “the intensity of violence is increasing that requires attention”. He said that the Government created the Commission for the Integrated Analysis of Juvenile Delinquency and Crime and the Public Security Police is developing, on its own initiative, a set of interventions, namely special operations in the most crowded places at night.

Monitoring crime in Portugal over the last 11 years, this comes as no surprise given the crime reports released by the police more recently. It is not the numbers that are increasing but the level of violence used. It is important that this is tackled especially late night violence seen in some of the larger cities.

With that please have a safe week. From our team at Safe Communities Portugal.

 

News

71-year-old pickpocket “earned” 10,000 euros since June

The Lisbon PSP detained a 71-year-old pickpocket for crimes of aggravated theft on buses, trams and trains. The man, already with previous convictions, was in preventive detention.

It selected victims who travelled on public transport in Lisbon and Porto. He used his advanced age to go unnoticed and followed them. Then, he stole their belongings “with great art and cunning from years of acquired criminal knowledge”, describes the PSP.

In 2019, the elderly man had already been investigated and detained in the city of Porto for crimes of the same nature. He was then sentenced to one year and two months in prison suspended for the same period.

In July, investigators from the Lisbon PSP realized that the man had returned to thefts inside buses, trams and trains between Lisbon and Porto.

The PSP team specially created and specialized for this type of crime set up a concerted action and put several investigators on the ground. On September 12, they managed to arrest the suspect, in the act of committing a crime, on Avenida 24 de Julho. Inside tram 15, he had stolen a wallet with money and documents from the inside of the pocket of a Scottish tourist’s shorts. The belongings were recovered and returned to the owner.

After the arrest, a search was carried out in the pension where the detainee was staying, and 1490 euros were seized, two stolen mobile phones – one of them in the metro, in Porto – and gold items worth 4500 euros, purchased with bank cards stolen from the victims, information that may still relate the defendant to other crimes.

However, it was possible to correlate it with 10 more qualified thefts with consistent and solid evidence of its authorship. His activity since June has earned him around 10 thousand euros in illicit income, estimates the PSP.

Since he had dual nationality from Portugal and a South American country, the suspect still travelled between European countries, where he also has criminal references, and practiced other thefts.

The Lisbon Criminal Investigation Judge, to whom the detainee was presented for the first interrogation, decreed that he should await trial in Preventive Prison.

Government will invest about €2 million in vehicles for the PSP and GNR proximity (community patrol) programs

 Lisbon, Sep 20, 2022 (Lusa) – The Government plans to invest around two million euros in vehicles “specifically intended for the PSP and GNR proximity programs”, namely Escola Segura, the Minister of Internal Administration announced today.

In the opening session of a seminar organized by the Public Security Police on the 30 years of existence of the Escola Segura program in Portugal, José Luís Carneiro said that this program continues to play a “very relevant role and requires permanent investment, whether in people, in their training, or in the means of work, with a view to improving the ability to intervene”.

“Within the scope of the Integrated Urban Security Strategy, on which we have been working, and which will very soon be put up for public discussion, the Escola Segura program will assume particular centrality. It is a new approach to urban security, based on the principles of prevention, proximity to the citizen, the promotion of local partnerships, the sense of opportunity for evaluation and intervention and the need to promote integration and interconnection between the different intervention programs and instruments on reality”, he explained.

In this sense, the minister advanced that the specific training of police officers assigned to proximity programs will be reinforced and that an investment of around two million euros is planned in vehicles specifically intended for proximity programs for the PSP and GNR, within the scope of programming, investments in the modernization and operation of security forces and services.

According to José Luís Carneiro, the PSP and GNR committed, in the last school year, more than 700 police officers and guards, who carried out 35,808 awareness-raising actions and 204 demonstrations of means, in addition to many thousands of hours dedicated to patrolling and policing the surroundings of school spaces.

The official said that in the last school year there was a decrease in criminal occurrences, with the majority of participations in the school environment related to situations of injuries or threats and offenses to physical integrity.

“Although the provisional crime numbers in 2022, when compared to 2019 – because the years 2020 and 2021 were atypical years, given the confinement – do not show, in general, worrying developments, it is on these crimes, demonstrative of greater violence, that we focus our concern,” he said.

José Luís Carneiro noted that after the pandemic there was “a tendency towards the emergence of behaviours of greater conflict, especially among young people, who go to nightclubs”, therefore, “a careful analysis and reflection” is necessary.

“It is essential that we study and understand this problem. The different dimensions associated with violence, criminality and juvenile delinquency must be worked on in an integrated and sustained way, so that we can understand, upstream, the problems and seek to find solutions and act on the causes”, he stressed.

As an example, the minister reported on the creation of the Commission for the Integrated Analysis of Juvenile Delinquency and Violent Crime, which has already presented guidelines and recommendations to the Government and which will be included in the Integrated Strategy for Urban Security.