This officer is not the only one in the Barcelona police force who seems to see violations all the time. They have ten officers who have fined more than a million euros in one year.
In January, the British police published a list that went around the world because it seemed impressive: the list included the regions where the most speeding fines are issued. West Yorkshire topped the list. More than 22 million in fines were issued there. By an entire force of more than 6,000 officers.
What seemed like a lot at the beginning of the year is now being dismissed as a joke by some agents in Barcelona.
Agents of a million
In Spain’s second city, there are ten who have each been fined more than a million in one year, according to figures for 2022. These were announced because of a new law that should provide transparency about what exactly Spanish officers do. The absolute number 1 is a police officer who issued 69,840 fines for a total amount of 7.5 million euros, almost all of them for speeding violations.
The officer did use a technical aid, documents show, but what that aid is is not described. Otherwise, people might be able to identify who the agent is. For the same reason, he or she does not have a name, but a number. The Barcelonan super finer is Agent 541.
That must be a familiar number to tens of thousands of motorists in the city, because 541 is also the number on the fine they received in the mail.
Roodlicht agent
Agent 541 is allowed to issue the most fines, but actually the Barcelonan agent 879 is a lot more special. Compared to colleague 541, he issued ‘only’ half the fines, but agent 879 did so for an amount of 2 million euros without using any aid. Well, except for a coupon book of course. What we know about officer 879 is that he or she checks for running through red lights.
When spokesman Eugenio Zambrano of the Spanish police union CSIF saw the numbers, he also started to have doubts, but whoever does the math will discover that it is not so crazy. Driving through a red light will earn you a fine of 200 euros in Barcelona.
If officer 879 worked the average number of days of 180 per year, this amounts to 55 fines per day that he or she wrote out manually. This is possible if the officer was on lookout for a few hours every day.
Bonus system
The officers themselves do not benefit from writing so many fines. In Barcelona there is no bonus scheme for officers who issue above-average fines. Police union CSIF is pleased that such an arrangement does not exist.
“We are against making officers’ pay partly dependent on how productive they are in issuing fines,” Zambrano said. “Let’s keep it that way. A bonus system would provide the wrong incentive to impose fines.”
All those millions, you would think that Barcelona is a city where a lot of violations are committed. That turns out not to be so bad. In Madrid there is a considerably greater chance that you will be fined as a road user.
In the Spanish capital, 199 million in fines were issued in 2022, more than three times as much as in Barcelona, while Madrid has twice as many inhabitants as Barcelona.
Withdrawals
If you delve a little deeper into the figures, it turns out that things are even more positive for residents and visitors of Barcelona. The count that has been published concerns fines that were posted. Many of these were later revoked.
The figures include millions in fines for old cars that drove in Barcelona’s environmental zone. All those receipts are torn up because the zone was not legally closed off properly.
2023-12-22 02:30:49
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