The new national director of the PSP said on Monday that he wants to hold officers responsible for “discriminatory and extremist behavior” and to defend “the good policemen who are often unjustly attacked in the public square”.
“We will demand that the police comply with the law, that the police respect the rights, freedoms and guarantees, that the police do not be discriminatory and extremist in any way,” Chief Superintendent Manuel Augusto Magina da Silva told reporters at the end of his inauguration at the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The new director of the Public Security Police said that he will also “defend the good policemen and the policemen who are often unfairly attacked in the public square when they have only fulfilled their duties and the regulations that are in force”.
Asked about police action in the case of the arrest of Cláudia Simões, a woman in Amadora, on January 19, Magina da Silva said that what she saw in the video was “a policeman fulfilling his obligations and the rules that are in force in the PSP “, having not seen” any infraction “.
“There is legal and legitimate action on the part of an officer of the authority. There is resistance in driving for identification and there is effectively an active resistance action against the agent who decided to proceed with the arrest, which is what happened. What happened next , which is not documented in the video, will obviously be duly clarified in the context of the criminal and disciplinary proceedings underway at IGAI“, said.
At the time, the Minister of Internal Administration ordered the General Inspection of Internal Administration (IGAI) to open an inquiry to investigate the facts related to police action following the complaint filed by the woman detained against the service police, alleging that she was violently assaulted by the agent.
As part of this occurrence, the organization SOS Racismo received “a report of police violence against black Portuguese citizens”, indicating that the woman was “in serious condition”, as a result of the aggressions she suffered at the bus stop and inside the PSP vehicle in towards the Casal de São Brás police station in Amadora.
The new national director of the PSP considered it important “to combat all forms of extremism, radicalism and discrimination, outside and inside the Public Security Police”.
In this sense, he stressed that he intends to “hold police officers who intentionally or seriously violate their legal obligations and the hierarchical instructions issued, namely with regard to the use of public force”, as well as “defend the police unjustly accused”.
Magina da Silva, until now number two of the PSP, took office as national director of the Public Security Police and replaces Luís Farinha, who had been in office since November 2013 and whose mandate had already ended in November 2019.
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