The Local Police and its language. Future challenges

Last month we talked about public safety in the article The grammar of security. Logically, we also included perception, social bonds, the fragility of modern societies, and the human need to feel protected. Now the challenge is to tread other paths in the language of security, mainly to talk about the role and functions of local police forces in the 21st century.What do we really expect from them? What is the scope of their authority? How do they manage transparency, ethics, or proximity? Are they prepared? Do we feel them close? And also: what human transformation – that of the police officers – does living for decades with conflict, tension, and citizen frustration imply?Since 1986, local police forces in the Spanish state are indeed police, but they are not a "full police" in all the classic dimensions of police activity. That year, the well-known Organic Law 2/1986 on security forces and bodies was enacted, a regulation that many municipal police officers perceived – from the very beginning – as an incomplete legislative architecture. The text makes it clear, legally, that local police forces are police. However, within the imaginary of the State machinery and state police forces, they remained as mere auxiliaries.They cannot carry out criminal investigations autonomously, unless under judicial dependency. Nor do they have the specific functions of the Judicial Police, nor do they have full access to certain state or European databases. They cannot carry out intelligence tasks or act with full autonomy in sensitive public security matters.Clearly stated: we are facing a partial police force, except when we talk about its own functions – security in municipal spaces, traffic regulation, ordinance application, prevention and proximity –, areas in which local police forces have developed a notable level of specialization and effectiveness.The problem is that this institutional and legislative reality has been going on for more than forty years, while the world, society, and forms of conflict have changed profoundly. In the early nineties, there was an intense struggle – under the direction of chief superintendent Joan Feliu – so that the scenario would not end up being this and so that the interpretation of the law would be different. The archives still preserve the tug-of-war between the Local Police of Palma and the rest of the State security forces. This was also recorded in the directives, appeals, and judicial rulings of those years. Finally, the model was consolidated with a very strict delimitation of powers. Whoever is in charge, is in charge.We continue. Within the Spanish constitutional framework, public security – and even citizen security itself – is not a full municipal competence. With the different normative reforms of local administrations, the little political capacity that mayors retained in this matter was progressively reduced. The main responsibility remains with the State, thus, in capital letters. Municipalities can participate in it, but always within the limits set by the norm.But, of course, citizens don't know all this and don't care much about it. Who they see every day at the bar and in the street is the mayor and the councilor on duty, and it is they who receive all the curses from heaven, while the real responsible parties receive no direct pressure. Indeed, town halls become protective shields against the Government Delegation and the State bodies. The victims are municipal officials and local police officers. In politics, not everything goes. Some parties and list leaders think so and use this difficult juncture to access power or undermine the resistance of those who govern. It doesn't matter if cheap populism or fear among citizens increases.In practice, however, public security and citizen security have ended up sharing diffuse and often ambiguous spaces. In theory, security boards should help coordinate and supplement these ambiguities, but we will leave this section for another occasion. So far we can state that we have a strained local police model, partially outdated and with evident functional imbalances.As we said before, the social and criminal landscape has changed profoundly. Today, reality is much more hybrid and complex. Cybercrime has appeared, information systems are completely different from those of 1986, and citizens demand real, visible, and immediate proximity security. But the legal framework remains limiting and restrictive. We have too many bodies with partial competencies and local police forces often underutilized.This model also has real strengths: it maintains centralized control over criminal investigation and intelligence, guarantees a certain penal homogeneity, and prevents each municipality from developing a kind of "own police force" with different criteria.However, local police forces have an effective presence in the territory. They know the people, the conflicts, and the social dynamics of towns and cities. They are often the first to intervene. Today they have quality training, operational experience, and reasonable technical resources. But we also face a possible underutilization of public resources. The citizen who asks for help or protection almost always knows nothing about this whole web of competencies. They only see a blue uniform and expect a response. And many times this response is not possible or is legally limited.Then the uncomfortable questions arise: why do local councils allocate so many economic resources to a police force that they can only partially manage? Why do citizens and political parties – especially from the opposition – constantly demand more officers and more police presence? And, above all, how have we arrived at building a local police model that increasingly leans towards citizen security, precisely in the area where it has the fewest competences, while traditional functions such as prevention, proximity, or administrative policing are weakened?Perhaps the final question is another: does the current model truly respond to the needs of the 21st century or does it continue to be, above all, a structure designed for a reality that no longer exists?