Interior Minister José Luis Carneiro today defended Gondomar, “there are no quick fixes” to drug addiction, and warned that labeling Porto’s drug-trafficking areas is “harmful” to residents.
Speaking on the sidelines of the opening of the Municipal Relief Operations Center in Gondomar, the official announced that, at a meeting scheduled for Monday with the Porto Metropolitan Region and the Minister of the Interior, he will “deliver to the mayors that the end of the integrated urban security strategy is approaching (.. .) and is the result of the contributions of many dozens of institutions” and which includes “capacity building for local security contracts”.
Asked about the conclusions of a meeting on March 10, where the Minister met with residents of Porto’s neighborhoods to discuss the problem of drug trafficking in the city, José Luis Carneiro stated that “complex problems never have simple or quick solutions. are incremental, step-by-step solutions that progressively introduce improvements.”
“If these were quick solutions when demolishing neighborhoods, if it were a magic wand, solutions would be found. There are no quick fixes for problems, namely drug addiction, which sometimes takes a whole generation to achieve results, ”the head of the line insisted.
Defending the fact that police intervention is “only part of the equation”, he relied on numbers to say that in 2022 “there were 30% more police operations than in 2019” and that in the case of Porto County there is data i.e. , “despite this activity, which tends to increase crime rates (…), very positively.”
“In 2022, more than 450 arrests were made in this particular area, which is considered critical in the city of Porto. [Bairros da Pasteleira e de Pinheiro Torres]. We should avoid labeling the territory because they are very harmful to those who live there and instead of helping to solve problems, they sometimes leave deep marks on those who live there, which is the opposite of what should be done in conditions for the inclusion and development of local communities”.
And he continued: “We have to think very carefully about what we articulate in public space. Police intervention and police operations are intensifying, in October 2022, the police force in the Porto metropolitan area was increased.