Aaron Rivero: "It is incredible that today there are national police officers without bulletproof vests on the streets"

Aaron Rivero, leader of the Jupol union, the majority in the Police, denounces the lack of material resources for the agents. “It is incredible that today there are national police officers without bulletproof vests on the streets,” he denounced in an interview with EL MUNDO.

All parties are looking for them during the electoral period.. What happens to you the day after the elections? Indeed, we are already accustomed to the promises during the electoral period from both sides of the parliamentary arch. It is an understandable situation, since the National Police is a group that represents an important fishing ground for votes for political parties. For this reason, from Jupol we have always remained firm in our demands, we have held meetings with all the political parties and we have all asked for the same thing: equal pay and a dignified retirement for national police officers, under equal conditions for police officers. autonomous. They are just demands and in which we will never cease. We hope that, after the elections on July 23, the government that settles in Spain will address these demands once and for all and will not deceive us again as the current government has done, which promised equalization while it was in opposition and when it arrived to the Government, the first measure it took in relation to the National Police was to veto the Salary Equalization Law. Their current claims are not new. No government has given them a solution…Unfortunately not, to this day there is still a salary gap of about 400 euros per month between the payroll of a national police officer and that of a mosso. A gap that doubles if we talk about retirement. The regional police officers retire at 59 years of age, without loss of purchasing power, while a national police officer has to wait until he is 65 years old and, even so, retires with a loss of around 1,000 euros per month compared to our counterparts. autonomous. As of today we have the verbal commitment of the Popular Party to carry out salary equalization and dignified retirement, but we ask you to go one step further, we ask you to include it in writing in your electoral program clearly and unequivocally and to commit with a budget item of 2024. If they don't, they will be imitating the PSOE that abandoned the National Police. What is Jupol's assessment of these years? We are making a positive assessment of what Jupol has achieved in its first legislature as the majority union of the National Police. We have made significant progress both in rights and at the legal level. However, there are still things to fight for, as we have already mentioned. Salary equality and decent retirement for national police officers is the main issue that occupies our union action and our efforts. But, in addition, we have several open judicial fronts pending resolution. From Jusapol we currently have a procedure before the Supreme Court requesting the union of the singular and general component in a single specific complement, which would result in an increase in extra payments and in the second activity. We have also judicialized that the amounts corresponding to the false equalization, reflected in the payroll, are incorporated into the specific supplement as a consolidated amount in the payroll and recognized in the Job Catalog. We have raised two collective conflicts before the General Directorate of the Police, with the clear intention that the compulsory processing issues that must go through the Council are not approved, unfortunately without the support of any other union. What are the achievements that have achieved?There are many successes achieved by Jupol in these four years. We have managed to extend the 6×6 shift with several court rulings that recognize an excess of hours from the previous shift, which puts an end to the excess hours that the police had been carrying out and that, until the arrival of Jupol, had not been recognized. In addition, we have achieved important judicial victories, forcing the General Directorate of the Police to return thousands of euros to the police for irregularities that were being committed with the approval of the Administration. And, what is even more serious, with the silence of the rest of the union organizations. Thanks to the pressure exerted by Jupol in the streets and to the serious and constant work, we have managed to paralyze the reform of the Citizen Security Law, which the Government of PSOE and Podemos intended to carry out and how harmful it was going to be for work of the State Security Forces and Corps and for all citizens of this country. In short, a series of improvements in social and labor conditions and in the rights of all national police officers that have been achieved thanks to the action and tireless work of Jupol. What is the current relationship between Jupol and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska? Completely non-existent, the minister has repeatedly refused to sit down with us. We only had one meeting with him prior to the demonstration against the reform of the Citizen Security Law, in which he simply asked us to tell him about our demands, without providing any solution or commitment.. If we had to take stock of the legislature of the current Government and, in particular, of Minister Marlaska, we could only say that it has been the Government and the Minister of the Interior that have done the most damage to the National Police. It has been the most disastrous government of democracy for the National Police. The Government and the Minister of the Interior Marlaska have not done anything in the face of our demands. They have left us in a helpless situation. The anger of the Police is the product of a historical debt of the State with us, which dates back to the implementation of the regional police forces, with a series of advantages and benefits that, to date, continue to be a grievance for the National Police and Civil Guard. Do you think that salary equalization could be a reality one day? As it cannot be otherwise, we are clear that it is. That is our vocation, our founding seed. Jusapol -and, therefore, Jupol- was born to achieve salary equality, and I can assure you that we will not stop fighting in all areas until we achieve it. Salary equalization is a matter of justice and, to achieve it, only one thing is missing: the political will of a government not to abandon its police officers, to comply with the mantra of “Equal work, equal salary and equal retirement”.¿ Why is a problem that continues to be a demand year after year not solved? Due to a lack of political will. In the previous elections, all the political parties had salary equalization in their electoral programs. The only thing missing is that, when they reach the Government, they fulfill their promise. In this claim, from Jupol we have found ourselves alone. No other union has dared to accompany us and have the courage to stand up to the Administration, but our hand will always remain outstretched. The force that the police give us in these upcoming elections on June 28 will be the force with which we can force the institutional blockade and demand our demands. If they give us majority support again, the rest of the police unions will understand that their colleagues demand courage, which to date they have not had. Does the National Police work precariously? Unfortunately, yes. To this day, the lack of both material and human resources in the National Police is one of the biggest scourges we have. The lack of means implies the verification of the situation of helplessness and the police ghetto in which the Government of Pedro Sánchez and the Minister of the Interior have tried to lock us up. It is incredible that, to this day, there are still national police officers on the streets without bulletproof vests, that TASER electric pistols are still stored in drawers in many police stations and are not distributed to colleagues, or that we have an obsolete National Shooting Plan , that it does not adapt to the current criminal reality, and that we do not have a protocol for the use of weapons that leaves the policemen sold in case they have to use their regulation weapon. And, most bloody, it is not understandable that, with the National Police being the police force that receives the most attacks each year, more than 9,000 police officers are attacked every year in Spain, and the Government continues to not consider the National Police a risky profession and Civil Guard, while it does so with the rest of the police in Spain. The demonstrations they have made, under the Jusapol platform, stopped the new Citizen Security Law, are they satisfied? Of course we are satisfied. That was our goal and we managed to achieve it thanks to the pressure we exerted on the street, in institutions and in the media.. And, thanks also to the union that we achieved from all the police forces in Spain, we managed to get all the police forces to agree to shout in unison, forgetting about particular interests, thanks to which, we managed to bend the arm of the Administration and stop a reform that was going to be very harmful for all agents of the Security Forces and Corps, but above all for all citizens who were going to see their security compromised. The text that we finally managed to stop, according to the very actors involved in the development of this reform, had regressive measures to deal with guarantees the new challenges we are facing: high-intensity crime, international mafias that operate in our territory, gangs very violent juveniles, crime that takes advantage of technology to challenge authority and break the law.. The modifications that they wanted to approve were detrimental to police efficiency, with the consequent lack of protection for society and, therefore, for Spaniards.