Edition 147
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Friday, December 13, 2013
LONG ARM OF THE GUARDS Cheap cops move slammed Get The Courier Newspaper whenever you want! Available on iPad, iPhone and any Android powered smartphone or tablet! Just search for us in the App Store and Google Play!
By ALEX TRELINSKI Spanish security guards are to be given police powers including the right to stop and search people, as well as carrying out arrests. The controversial move is set be passed by the Senate in Madrid as part of a new Private Security Law, which has been criticised by opposition parties for offering cheap priva tised policing as well as groups who’ve said that civil rights are being threatened. Guards would be given the green light to arrest people at public events, or in a shopping mall, and at what have been described as crime “hotspots” like ATM machines. The new law will also allow private guards to go after what the bill describes as "delinquents caught in the act of committing a crime even in cases where it has nothing to do with the peo ple or goods that they are watching over and protecting." The ruling PP government has introduced the new legisla tion along with support from the Catalan and Basque nation alist parties CIU and PNV. Supporters of the bill say that it allows security guards to carry out their job effectively and to help the police, rather than leading to an overlap of duties. They added that there was absolutely no threat or changes planned to the “traditional police force”, and that the current law relating to private security in public places is “excessive ly rigid and has made more difficult or impeded the neces sary authorization of services to the benefit of the public.” The opposition socialist PSOE party said the bill was “another attack by the government on Spain’s welfare state”
and congratulated private security companies for the money they are likely to make from the move. Meanwhile a spokesman for the National Lawyers Society warned that civil rights would be eroded further under the new measures, adding that only the police should have the power to arrest anybody and it would make life harder for people to chal lenge what they might view as a wrongful arrest. This latest move comes after strong criticism over another part of the Security Bill which will see citizens given large fines for a wide range of activities from carrying out unautho rized protests to disrupting traffic by playing football in the street.
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