Housing: Citizen denounces the RMP following the action of PSP

Um citizen made a complaint to the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) aiming at the national director of the PSP and asking for the government's intervention in the police action in demonstrations for housing.

According to the complaint, to which Lusa had access today, the citizen, who is represented by the law firm António Garcia Pereira, points out the four police interventions that caused several injuries in Lisbon and Porto, on 15 and 25 October, and calls for urgency in the processing of the complaint so that the evidence can be preserved.

“The decisive proof consists of public and private video surveillance images, security camera recordings, radio communications records and internal planning documents”, reads in the document.

Public crimes are involved, including abuse of power, offenses to qualified physical integrity, aggravated coercion and kidnapping, and the complaint concerns all persons who “decided, ordered, commanded, executed, or, being able and seeing to do so, did not prevent the illegitimate and disproportionate use of force against citizens who peacefully exercised the right of assembly and demonstration.”.

Among the denounced are the National Director of the PSP, the commanders of the Metropolitan Commands of Porto and Lisbon, the officers and graduates of the PSP who “commanded on the ground each of the operations” and whose identity should be established with the PSP and the agents of the Intervention Corps, the Special Police Unit and the Metropolitan Commands of Lisbon and Porto who “aggressed with batons, especially in the head, people who did not offer active resistance, who attacked people already on the ground, already handcuffed or with motor disabilities”.

The complaint also refers to “any other people, including public office holders”, requiring it to be ascertained whether the Minister of Internal Administration, the presidents of the municipalities of Lisbon and Porto or the commands of the Municipal Police of Lisbon and Porto “have given any kind of instructions, advice or requests that have in some way determined the time, mode and intensity of interventions”. It reads in the document.

In the 23 pages of complaint, the citizen, through his lawyers, makes a description of each of the police interventions, based on the news released by the media, stressing that “the meetings were peaceful, had been communicated”, that “it is not said that the self-reasoned interruption required has been carved and handed over to the prosecutors” by law and that “the means used – sticks used against the head, assaults on people on the floor, the person with motor disabilities, the person already in handcuffs, the person who filmed, dogs and electroshock guns displayed or used against people sitting or on a passive cord – clearly and manifestly exceed the “strictly necessary”.

In the complaint submitted it is also requested that the investigation be directed by the Public Prosecutor or assisted by the Judicial Police and not by the PSP and leaves the note that “other citizens may come later to subscribe” the complaint.

In this regard, the Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an inquiry into the intervention of the PSP on October 15 in Porto and, according to the information advanced on October 23 by the PGR regarding the performance of the PSP of October 20, in Lisbon, had not until then been “located any inquiry”.

On Monday, Amadeu Guerra reiterated that the prosecutor opens investigations whenever he understands that there are reasons for this, but asked for “a little calm”.

“The prosecutor has few resources and has many inquiries. [...] We must first consider whether there are clear indications to do the investigations, as we do in any situation. That's what we're doing, calmly. The more we multiply surveys, the more difficulty we have in resolving the whole number of surveys we have in several areas,” he explained.