The minutes of the operational coordination table (MCO) between the Cos de Mossos d’Esquadra (CME) and the Urban Guard (GU) collect, according to what this newspaper has had access to, up to 12 formal requests of the police force of the Generalitat of consultation of the Barcelona City Council databases. The first occasion took place November 20, 2012 and the last oneon June 3, 2022. Sources from the Ministry of the Interior acknowledge that the Catalan police still do not have automated access to municipal data, such as the population register, municipal taxes, complaints regarding both municipal and traffic ordinances, municipal licenses, municipal inspections, etc. images from municipal security cameras, municipal warehouses, accidents and identifications.
Sources from the Barcelona consistory welcomed the Mossos’ demand with surprise because they consider that there is a “obvious” collision with the data protection law. According to these sources, “no other administration or police force has direct and generalized access to municipal databases.” “These databases have personal information and protected from the public and, therefore, are subject to specific regulations that guarantee their rights”, they indicate, and “this does not mean that there is no communication and that specific and circumscribed information does not flow”, they add.
This Thursday a new meeting of the Local Security Board of Barcelona, body that brings together the police forces and their political leaderships, under the presidency of the mayoress, Ada Colau.
Settlement Lawsuits
Interior recalls that, although the first request was made in 2012, the last 11 have been produced since 2018 and that in these five years that have elapsed, municipal authorities “have been dragging their feet, that they were going to study it or that they were studying it”. According to the minutes of the MCO, on June 26, 2018 there is a formal request from the Mossos for automated access to municipal data, “in compliance with the Coordination and Collaboration Framework Agreement of Public Security and Police between Interior and the city council of the year 2005″. Point 17 of this agreement states that: “Barcelona City Council will provide the CME, through the corresponding agreement, access and use of the databases of police interest that are determined in accordance with the applicable legislation”.
In addition, the consistory points out that “the request that they make for generalized access to the municipal databases that they are requesting is not a police matter, it should be done to other municipal authorities“. Interior reminds that usual interlocutor de los Mossos is the municipal police force and that is where the demand is conveyed.
Fax and mail
It is worth emphasizing the term ‘automated’ because the CME can have input into the information, although through paths that are not very consistent with the current technological times. The regional police have only been able to consult the data after formalizing a request first by fax, and subsequently, by email, that have been answered manually by municipal police personnel. an access inefficient due to the obvious time delay that it entails. Police sources assert that “automated access to municipal databases is essential to expedite the operational work” of the Mossos. However, official spokesmen for the Interior assert that the relationship between the police forces is “excellent”.
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The truth is that this is not the first complaint that arises from one of these bodies towards the other. The GUB also has a, they understand, grievancesince for months they have been demanding that the Interior authorize their connection with the national Fingerprint Bank, as the city council agreed with the Ministry of Interior.
In fact, about this demand and about the delay of an agreement that both bodies had to sign on the collection of complaints of sexist violencesupported, in part, the motion of disapproval of the ‘councillor’ Joan Ignasi Elena that promoted the PSC and that, in the end, had a majority in Parliament. That the political headquarters of both bodies be in the hands of ERC, the Ministry of the Interiorand of the PSC (by virtue of the municipal government pact that still survives between the Comuns and the socialists), security management, it turns the relationship between the bodies into one more piece on the Catalan political board.