Abel Losada values the unequal behavior of crime in the first quarter: it fell by 0.5% in rural and rose by 5.8% in cities

The first quarter of the year brought an irregular behavior of criminality that is reflected in the statistics that the subdelegate of the Government, Abel Losada, studied today with the officers in charge of the National Police and the Civil Guard. Thus, while in urban areas, within the competence of the National Police, the figures rose by 5.8% in the province as a whole; in rural areas, that is, in the area of the Civil Guard, there was a drop of 0.5%.
Abel Losada was informed that the first of this month of April show clear signs that crime is beginning to decrease in all cities and remains stable in the rural area, so #expect the figures, at the end of the year, to be very similar to those of the set of 2023, which was a good year.
The subdelegate contextualized this first quarter, which is almost always the worst of the year, with the “real photo” of the province, which has a crime rate of 36 crimes per thousand inhabitants, while in the whole of Spain it is 51 per thousand, “so we can say that we live in a very safe province”. “However,” he added, “we are nonconformists and we want to be very awake to act on any warning signs.” The Provincial Xunta of Security was attended by the provincial chief commissioner, Juan José Díaz; the commissioner of Vigo, Ramiro Gómez; the colonel of the Civil Guard, Simón Venzal, and the captain of the Subsector of Traffic, Antonio Pérez Piteira.
Abel Losada was informed that in the city of Pontevedra crime grew by 16.4% in the first quarter of the year, from 710 crimes to 827. During the meeting, the Chief Commissioner explained the report prepared by the Commissariat on the placement of bollards and other obstacles in the city center that hinder the passage of patrol vehicles and said that these difficulties do not exist in the rest of the cities and towns of the province. The subdelegate gave an account of his total respect for the urban competences of the City of Pontevedra, but also reiterated his support for the National Police, “which made a technical report talking about operational issues in the provision of such a basic service for citizens as security.”
No area of the Marín Police Station, the upturn in the first quarter is 39.1%, going from 115 to 160 crimes. Both in Pontevedra and in Marín there are clear signs that April is proving “much calmer” after the number of detainees in this first quarter rose by 30.5% in the capital of the province and by 62.5% in the Marinese town.
As for the Vigo Police Station, there is an increase of 5.2%, which is therefore less than 5.8% of the province as a whole in the area of the National Police. The Olympian city went from 3,058 crimes to 3,219 by comparing the first quarters of 2024 and 2023. The number of detainees is practically the same. The deputy government delegate regretted that alarmist visions of security are being offered in Vigo because of the two homicides perpetrated in this first quarter of the year, one of which is explained by a psychotic outbreak of the alleged author, who suffers from a mental illness. With this respect, Losada recalled that the so-called “crime of the suitcase” occurred last September, so it cannot add to the statistics of the first quarter of the year. In addition, he recalled, all the murders were clarified. “The reality is the one reflected in the police statistics, nothing more and nothing less. And the data for the first quarter of Vigo are better percentage than those of other police stations, and so far in April they are even better.” The deputy delegate was also informed of the arrest and detention of several people responsible for theft inside vehicles, a section that had grown in recent months. This will have a positive impact on the next Viguese statistics.
The best news comes from the Vilagarcía Police Station, where crime fell by 13.2% in the first quarter of the year, reducing the number of crimes from 499 to 433, a fall that was described as “spectacular” by Abel Losada. Also in Vilagarcía, April is behaving in a very good direction.
The other positive data during the session of the Provincial Xunta of Security is brought up by the Civil Guard, since in its demarcation the decrease is 0.5% in the first quarter of the year. This respect, Abel Losada recalled that there is a clear line of stability with respect to recent years.
The last section addressed in the Xunta Provincial de Seguridad was the accident on the roads in this first quarter. A total of 8 people died (one more than in the same period last year). The number of vulnerable users is again worrying, since of the 8 people, 3 were motorcyclists and 2 were pawns.
The deputy delegate announced that the next security campaign of the General Directorate of Traffic will have a direct impact on motorcyclists. In addition, he sent a productive message to people walking on the roads, since one of the two victims hit in this quarter was walking at dawn on the N-640 in Agolada dressed in dark clothes and another crossed the VG-20 highway.
Losada concluded by reiterating his request for “sentidiño” to the political leaders who use road safety as a weapon of political confrontation, “because accidents occur on all types of roads, regardless of which Administration they belong to and, as always happens, the autonomous roads absorb more than half of the fatal accidents, far above the national and local ones.”