Maritime Police promise special attention at unattended beaches

The commander-in-chief of the Maritime Police (PM)has said that special attention will be given to unsupervised beaches during the bathing season, reinforcing surveillance when there are more bathers in those areas.

At a hearing in the National Defence parliamentary committee, Vice Admiral Luís Carlos de Sousa Pereira said that, in an "atypical" bathing season, due to the covid-19 pandemic, with special rules on physical distance, it would be normal for people to go to beaches not monitored.

"What we want is that the beaches are not crowded and people are distributed on the beaches with the greatest capacity," said Sousa Pereira, afterwards explaining the operation of the "SeaWatch" programme, which has existed for ten years and pays special attention to these areas, which uses surveillance with an off-road vehicle.

Through a "command and control capacity", he revealed, it is possible to know "in real time, through a system of geolocation" of the personnel, "to assess the load of the beaches" and to make a "reinforcement of personnel" for these areas.

"As we see that there are more people on these beaches, we can move personnel from the surveillance programme," described the director-general of the Maritime Authority and Commander-in-Chief of the PM.

Chief of Staff of the Navy, Mendes Calado, also in parliament, the vice-admiral assured, several times, that the marines who will help the Maritime Police this year will not have police functions.

These elements will have missions to advise bathers, in order, for example, to maintain their social distance - parasols must be at least three metres apart - and to monitor the beach.

They will have a "didactic" and informative function for beach users regarding the prohibition decided this year for games (with ball and rackets) on the beach, which happened last weekend.

"A lot of people don't know, that they cannot use the rackets or the balls. We had a didactic attitude", he described, referring to the last weekend, when the sun took many people to the beach.

To give "advice to stay away" from one another or to "promote good practices" by bathers, he argued, it is not "necessary to have a policeman to do this", it may be "a military man who is familiar with the sea".

"It is in this logic that this question is asked" between Maritime Police personnel and the reinforcement of Marines personnel.

In case of need, as he said to have happened a few days ago with "a feud" in Carcavelos, there will be recourse to the police, in this case the PSP, which is, he said, articulated with the PM.

The "great challenge" of the authorities, he summed up, "is to regulate the use of beaches" by people and "compliance with the law of those who use them".