IT has been revealed that Spanish police have only one vessel to patrol along the stretch of narco-infested Andalucian coastline.
This news comes from a Jucil (Justicia para la Guardia Civil) spokesperson, Rafael Maldonado, who has warned that the situation is worrying.
“The conditions are far from adequate, they lack sufficient staff and materials,” he told El Debate.
He believes that the Guardia Civil is working with resources that are inferior to those of the drug traffickers themselves stating that ‘we are always one step behind’.
It is their marine resources that are particularly poor with Maldonado explaining that in Almeria there are not enough boats and that the boats they do have are often too old to carry out operations.
Of the four boats that the unit currently has, they can only really use ‘one medium-sized boat which has been used for over 15 years and has little ability to operate in bad sea conditions’.
“We need boats that can maintain speeds of between 35 and 40 knots even in bad sea conditions and that are designed specifically for this type of operation,” Maldonado has said.
Resources are however not just limited at sea; the units responsible for watching the units from the land are also apparently struggling.
Maldonado explained that ‘the Guardia Civil is very short on staff in all specialties’ with a shortage of adequate vehicles for exploring coastal areas, especially those equipped for complicated terrains.
Limited technical equipment for night time vigilance has also led him to ask a question: ‘how can we watch a coast at night without binoculars or nocturnal viewfinders?’
The Jucil do not consider that the Direccion General of the Guardia Civil nor the Ministerio del Interior are adequately responding to the growth of narcos and drug trafficking on the Andalucian coast.
Therefore they are asking for the reintroduction of Ocunsur, a special unit that fought against drug trafficking. This organisation was responsible for many arrests and confiscations, according to Jucil.
Maldonado believes that there has been an ‘increase’ in ‘gangs on the Andalucian coast’ since Ocunsur stopped operating with Jucil warning that drug trafficking operations are capable of more than ever and are acting with impunity.
“The drug traffickers arrive day after day on the Andalucian coast, some are intercepted but lots of others are not,” says Maldonado.
According to this Jucil spokesperson, “we are totally unprotected”.
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