Thousand weekly Barcelona metro theft incidents: A thousand complaints a week for theft in the Barcelona metro
At the end of June, 31 new Mossos d'Esquadra fresh out of the police school were incorporated into the area responsible for public transport safety in the conurbation of Barcelona. The reinforcement has allowed the Catalan police to increase the civilian patrols that daily kick the suburban to try to scare or stop in the face the long hundreds of thieves who have the subway, trains and buses as their main work scenarios.
Think for a moment that everything that happens on the surface has its replica in the suburban. For better and for worse. Under the ground, specialized pickpockets work to perfect a technique of inadvertent theft, which is fought daily by uniformed and civilian policemen of the aforementioned specialized area of the Mossos. The number of complaints varies weekly but the average is approximately one thousand criminal acts every seven days. With a ranking in which appear the most conflicting metro stations and that usually leads the Espanya.
Thousand weekly Barcelona metro theft incidents
The typology
The most frequent criminal activity is the theft of carelessness in the agglomerations
Unlike what is happening on the surface, where robberies are being fired with violence and intimidation, in the subway, the train and the bus, the thief and the thief, because more women act than men, they are much more discreet . And it has its logic. In the suburban it is much more difficult to escape from police action if you have been discovered. And, for some time now, pickpockets have known that the Mossos are helped by images from the security cameras of the metro to control live everything that happens in the labyrinthine corridors of the great suburban area of Barcelona.
But let's go to the figures. We have chosen at random the statistics of the last seven days of June. Only 637 complaints were filed in the metro, another 138 were from Renfe users, 28 had the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat, 184 buses, 14 bus stations, 8 tram; and that week no complaint was filed for crimes neither on the funicular nor on the cable car, two public transports also included in the police statistics.
That week the most conflictive station was the one of Espanya, where the lines 1 and 3 of the metro converge and the connection with the Railroads of the Generalitat. Its hallways and corridors were the scene of 53 robberies. It was followed by the Barceloneta station with 47 complaints and Sants-Estació with 44.
More police activity
The incorporation of 31 new mossos to the subway has increased patrol's patrols
A sergeant, a corporal and four agents, among them three in recent graduated practices, participate in a briefing held in one of the offices of the police offices of the Bolívia Street police station, headquarters of the Metropolitan Transport Security Area ( Astmet).
Alejandro is 27 years old and before passing the exams to enter the Mossos he worked a few months as a machinist in the subway. I had a good grade and the option to request a destination for the internship. And chose the Astmet. "It's a very specialized area, in a very specific scenario, the means of transport, where you can shoot a lot as a police officer doing tracking, identification, detention in flagrante," he explains.