The Minister of Internal Administration, Luís Neves, announced that the PSP reorganization plan in Lisbon, Porto and Setúbal will allow freeing around 500 police officers for the streets, 200 of whom for the Portuguese capital. The announcement was made during a parliamentary hearing before the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Liberties and Guarantees.
Luís Neves indicated that the PSP presented the Government with a reorganization plan for the three commands, explaining that this is not about reducing police presence, but about concentrating resources to allow greater response capacity. Municipalities will always be involved and an independent structure will monitor the results of this work.
The official guaranteed that the police's own data does not support a narrative of widespread insecurity, emphasizing that the focus is on general crime and not on violent and serious crime. Negotiations with the security forces' unions will resume later this month and the publication of the dispatch on the number of PSP police officers going to pre-retirement is imminent.
The parliamentary hearing, which began at 10:00, is being marked by recent controversies involving Luís Neves, referring to the period when he was national director of the Judicial Police, between 2018 and this year.
