- Residents state that recent arrests have not prevented attempted robberies this weekend.
Residents of Pinar de Campoverde in Pilar de la Horadada have resumed surveillance patrols in the streets after confirming that there has been at least one new robbery attempt inside a home this weekend.
“Same people, same clothes. They were seen jumping into the grounds of a house, presumably to access others,” explained a spokesperson for the residents. The owners have re-formed their surveillance operation which was introduced because of the wave of thefts that began at the beginning of last November.
“The good news of the recent arrest seemed like good news at the time. Although not for an attempted robbery, the criminal was identified and had an international warrant outstanding as a result of which he was detained,” stated the same source, who was disappointed that that the Pilareño council, and the media, “sold” the arrest as a solution to the problems being experienced with home robberies.
“Perhaps the detainee might have been a suspect in some robberies,” they point out, but based on the experience of this weekend, the perpetrators of the bulk of the intrusions are still active in the residential complex.
They are seemingly a group of assailants that live in, or close to, Pinar de Campoverde: thousands of houses in an urbanisation with 5,000 registered residents. Many have once again organised themselves through messaging groups to warn of possible assaults and have drawn up a map of the areas most affected by more than twenty assaults or attempted robberies in the last two months. They have once again taken to the streets with baseball bats and golf clubs.
The Pilar de la Horadada City Council say that they never stated that the detainee was linked to the wave of robberies, although it did confirm that the arrest was made in the context of the special police operation introduced to stop the wave of robberies.
So on Saturday night the residents went out again “to look for the criminal gang, with a view to ending the nightmare now… but for us they are not medals that we want to wear, it is not a game, we are protecting our homes, our families and our children”.
The Civil Guard and the Local Police, meanwhile, in addition to the mayor, have asked residents not to carry out these patrols because, in addition to breaking the law, they can pose a risk to the members of the community themselves.
