More than half of traffic offences are drink related

FIFTY-EIGHT per cent of the 1'442 traffic offences handled by Local Police officers in the Balearics so far this year have been drink related.
This was revealed yesterday by José Maria Rodríguez, Balearic minister of the Interior, during the presentation of the report on police activities in the first six months of the year. The possession and consumption of drugs accounted for 47.96 percent of the 1'174 accusations brought by the Local Police in the same period.
The report also indicated that 57 percent of court proceedings were for theft.
During this period 1'243 arrests were made, of which 971 were arrests made on Majorca, 57 on Minorca, and 215 on Ibiza and Formentera.
These figures mean that the Local Police arrested an average 11 people daily in the Balearics between January and June, said Rodriguez, who said he regretted that during this six months there had been no “advances” in the cooperation between the Local Police force and the State security forces (National Police and Guardia Civil), which he described as “vital”. The level of collaboration for the Local Police with the State security forces was 12.20 percent during the first half of the year, said the minister, who put this down to the “lack of interest in advancing the coordination” between the different forces and the existence of “political directives”. Rodríguez went on to say that between January and June of this year 32.68 percent of police effort had been centred around road safety and traffic, while citizen security accounted for 25.95 percent of their time. Administrative activities had accounted for 26.28 percent of their time, and welfare and social activities accounted for 15.30 percent, an average which had increased by 15.30 percent since the same period of 2005. In the field of citizen security, 15.25 percent of officer activity was related to the seizing of weapons, followed by action related to public order, which occupied 8.6 and 6.30 percent of their time respectively. Rodriguez added that in the first six months of the year the local police undertook 8'030 investigations and statements related to traffic on Majorca, which in the case of Minorca and Ibiza and Formentera were 338 and 149 respectively. In this respect, he said, investigations for theft represented 57.49 percent of their work in this field, followed by injuries and domestic violence which represented, respectively, 10.68 and 5.75 percent of the work done. Rodríguez was accompanied by Joan Feliu, manager of the Balearic Public Security Institute, who said that a plan to co-ordinate police action had been drawn up. It consists of 51 programmes, one of which will bring a data base into operation by the end of the year.
No calendar has been set for introducing the rest of the plan, which will include preparing polls and reports on the victims of crime, and sharing information with the National Police and Guardia Civil.