CATALUNYA police have extended a 10-day increased presence to a full summer post to prevent violent crimes among Raval neighbourhood members.
Barcelona’s police presence has ramped up for the summer due to continuous community conflict.
Specifically in the Rambla del Raval neighbourhood, the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police) and Barcelona Municipal police have announced their plan to conduct a permanent presence.
The decision comes after a large physical altercation took place between the Pakistani and Algerian communities on June 14 and 15.
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The first incident occurred when an argument broke out between a group of Algerians and staff of a Pakistani restaurant when the latter yelled at the former for using chairs from their terrace space.
A massive brawl ended up occurring between the two groups and other parties from both sides, requiring the assistance of both the Mossos d’Esquarda and Guardia Urbana to break up the violence.
More fights broke out on the following day in smaller groups, and one person stole a cell phone amidst the frenzy.
Repeated fights have caused insecurity in the area, resulting in an increased force for 10 days in Raval to ‘pacify the area and prevent similar incidents from happening again.’
From 9am to 2am, authorities monitored the promenade where the fights took place.
To work on mediation, officers also found two shopkeepers who could speak and try to ease tensions between the groups.
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“We managed to bring these two people together so they could talk, and both committed to mediating with their communities to prevent any further incidents,” explained an inspecting officer.
Now the plan is to maintain a permanent presence to avoid any future altercations between any Raval community members.
The fixed checkpoint is referred to under the ‘Helios Plan’ in which officers will take post from early morning until night to avoid violent outbursts.
The goal is to stop the stigma of Raval being considered a high crime neighbourhood.
However, Barcelona has experienced a violent crime wave as brutal turf wars recently pushed monthly incidents to unprecedented levels.
Data revealed an extraordinary month-on-month surge in raw street violence, with stabbings exploding four-fold from nine in April to 44 in May across the province.
Shootings have also doubled over the same period, jumping from six in April to 12 in May to cap a bloody total rise of 50% since March.
Out of the 44 knife attacks recorded in May, 40 caused serious injuries and four were fatal.
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