PSP launches VIDA Squadron in Almada to strengthen support for victims

A Public Security Police (PSP) today launched the VIDA Squadron in the municipality of Almada, a project designed to strengthen the quality, expertise and effectiveness of the police response to victims of domestic violence and vulnerable people.

According to PSP, the initiative marks a new stage in the functional reorganization of the facilities of the Esquara do Laranjeiro, parish of the municipality of Almada, in the district of Setúbal, now dedicated to welcoming and bringing together different police valencias, promoting a more integrated, specialized and people-centered response.

“ More than a change of facilities or a reorganization of services, the VIDA Squadron represents a new way of looking at the police intervention: an approach that seeks to go beyond the complaint, placing the protection, monitoring and dignity of the victim in the center of all the action ", explains the PSP.

According to the Public Security Police, domestic violence is one of the most demanding and sensitive realities of police activity, often involving, beyond its criminal dimension, situations of fear, dependence, emotional fragility and social vulnerability.

According to data from the Annual Internal Security Report (RASI) of 2025, 2,384 domestic violence crimes were reported to the authorities in Setúbal district.

These crimes of domestic violence, the PSP advances, require an intervention that is not exhausted in the immediate response to the occurrence or formalization of a criminal procedure.

“It is in this context that the VIDA Squadron emerges, seeking to create conditions for closer proximity between the Proximity and Victim Support Teams (EPAV) and the specialized criminal investigation, favoring the articulation between the different valences, the continuity of the follow-up and a faster and more appropriate response to the needs of each victim,” he stresses.

According to the PSP, the concentration of these capacities in the same space will also provide more reserved and adjusted conditions of care to the sensitivity of situations, reinforcing the privacy, trust and humanization of contact with the police.

Considering that the effective protection of victims does not depend exclusively on police intervention, requiring complementary responses in the social, family, psychological, health and legal support areas, the Vida Squadron also presents itself as an institutional cooperation space, open to articulation with municipalities, health services, victim support structures and the Children and Youth Protection Commissions.

The PSP adds in a statement that the implementation of this project had the collaboration and involvement of the Union of the Freguesias de Laranjeiro and Feijó, for the adaptation and reorganization of the facilities and there is the ambition of the project to develop an increasingly close, accessible and specialized response, able to accompany the victims throughout the different stages of the process.

The objective, he stresses, is to contribute not only to the immediate safety of victims, but also to the recovery of trust and the creation of conditions that allow them to rebuild their life projects.