The criminal acts reported in the city of Barcelona have decreased by 23% between the months of January to May compared to the same period of 2019, especially black year for the historic of the Catalan and Barcelona police. In the local safety board that Barcelona’s town hall Y Department of the Interior have celebrated this Thursday there has not been semi-annual balance, as usual, because the month of June has been left out of the balance that has been published. Nor have data been given on the increase in crimes of robbery with violence or intimidation, which is usually an offense that has a notable impact on the citizen’s perception of security.
At the request of journalists, a spokesman for the Interior has finally provided data on crimes of robbery with violence or intimidation for the months of May and June. Both months were considered necessary, also for this newspaper, because the recovery of economic activity and the influx of tourists in the last two months had caused a significant increase in the number of robberies committed by thieves in the street when they start a watch, when they pull out a knife or when they act in a group and pounce on a victim. A growth that was not observed when mixing all the crimes and closing the count until May.
The data is as follows: the robberies with violence and intimidation that were reported in the month of May 2022 were 0.5% less than those committed in the month of May 2019. And the robberies with violence and intimidation that were committed in the month of May 2022 were 6% less than those committed in the month of June 2019. In other words, once the pandemic is over, the violent thieves they act almost as much as they did before the black summer of 2019when these illicit ones ended up growing up to almost 30%a negative record.
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The data confirms what the agents, both from the Urban Guard as of the Mossos, they explain in the last two months. But they also make something significant clear: the police efforts of both bodies have managed to stop the rebound. If in May the ascending curve of the activity of violent thieves had reached the height of the darkest trend, that of June has already lost some steam, although the trend continues above other years without a pandemic such as 2018 or 2017.
Police sources relate the containment of this increase to the work that the agents are doing day and night on the street, working with more effectivewith specific groups like the one that persecutes the so-called ‘watchmakers’, applying the police intelligence to identify repeat offenders and handing over to the courts more elaborate testimonials to achieve more preventive prison sentences.