Police union says government investment ‘insufficient’ and ‘below requirements’

“This government has yet to prove that it is truly valuing the police career”, Ferreira told SIC Notícias after the announcement which has had critics wondering ‘what all the fuss was about anyway?’ Why did the prime minister feel it was necessary to call a prime time press conference to say what Lusa has described as “Portugal is a safe country, but we cannot live in the shade of a banana tree”. Why mention a banana tree? What WAS last night’s announcement trying to prove (the detail about an injection of €20 million for police forces was, after all, something that did not need to be beamed to the country)? It is a question that has been addressed by leader writers today, while police really don’t appear to be falling over themselves with gratitude or delight.

Armando Ferreira described the €20 million investment in new equipment for the PSP and GNR police forces as “insufficient”, bearing in mind so much of the forces’ equipment is in varying states of decrepitude.

“Obviously, it is always positive to hear the government say it is going to invest in the security forces”, he said. “But you have to realise that this investment has always been made; it has to be made – because if you don’t invest, the police grind to a halt (…)

“Knowing that another security force had a pay increase of €700 and this government has only given us €200 means that it has devalued us in relation to other colleagues”, he said, referring back to the bitter struggle by police to reach pay parity afforded colleagues in the PJ (judicial police) by the previous government.

SIC also refers to the fact that the previous government approved a “similar package” of investment for vehicles “which should arrive in 2026”.

This latest package paves the way for the purchase of “more than 600 vehicles” for PSP/ GNR forces, said Luís Montenegro, who refused to be drawn on whether or not his government was trying to ‘win Brownie points against CHEGA’ – an accusation lobbed at him by Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos.

CHEGA meantime, through its leader André Ventura, has interpreted last night’s announcement as being the prime minister’s “realisation, finally” that CHEGA has been right all along about the need for more means to be given to Portugal’s police forces.

Update: PCP communists have also reacted supremely negatively to last night’s press conference. MP António Filipe accused the prime minister of “using security forces as propaganda for the government’s actions”. He also considered the investment announced to be “ridiculous”.

“What is significant and regrettable (…) is that the Prime Minister, speaking almost as if he were a commander of the police forces, by making a statement of this nature, uses the security forces and services in the service of government propaganda. All the more so because what was announced (€20 million for the purchase of vehicles) is ridiculous”, when compared to the annual budget for each security force, which is well over €1 billion, and the budget for equipment, which comes to €157 million.

In Filipe’s mindset, what the country saw last night was “a de facto surrender to an alarmist discourse on internal security, which, unfortunately, the government is playing along with. We already know that the government favours political spectacle with the presentation of big programmes, big projects and lots of proposals – programmes and projects that then, in practice, have minimal implementation”.

There was, in short, “no justification”, for a statement along the lines of last night’s “with such solemnity, almost in an alarmist tone, when in fact the government did not come to announce anything”.