The Madeira Regional Delegation of the Police Professionals’ Union (ASPP/PSP/) responded this evening to the stabbing of a young police officer in Ribeira Brava. Through the regional delegation, the ASPP/PSP reveals with “deep concern” the serious incident recorded during the Saint Peter’s Festivities, in the town of Ribeira Brava, in Madeira.
On the night of the incident, ASPP reveals, “a young Public Security Police officer, currently serving in the Lisbon Metropolitan Command, and who was on vacation in the company of his family, was savagely attacked with a bladed weapon by an individual born and resident in Câmara de Lobos, known to the authorities and with a significant criminal history”.
According to the ASPP version, the officer, upon noticing a fight during the festivities, identified himself as “a member of the PSP and tried to intervene in order to restore public order”. In an “absolutely cowardly and violent manner, he was stabbed six to eight times, one of which seriously punctured his lung, which required his immediate admission to the Dr. Nélio Mendonça Hospital, where he remains under intensive care”.
This incident, unfortunately, “is not an isolated case”. The ASPP/PSP has been warning, “insistently, about the worrying increase in attacks against police officers on duty or off duty”. These situations “raise serious questions about the effective protection of security force professionals” and the capacity of the “judicial system to respond in an effective and dissuasive manner”.
We are naturally “concerned about the health of our colleague, to whom we wish a speedy and full recovery, but we are also concerned about the response of the justice system”.
Unfortunately, we have seen, “in other similar cases, court decisions that allow the aggressor to return home before the victim”. We sincerely hope that this will not be another one of those cases. Justice must be on the side of those who fulfill their duty to protect society.
The ASPP/PSP will continue to closely monitor this situation and demands that exemplary and urgent measures be taken to stop this cycle of violence against those who risk their lives every day for the common good.