Abuse of power: Relationship worsens police sentence

The Guimarães Court of Appeal has increased the sentences applied to a police officer convicted of abuse of power and three defendants for drug trafficking, one of them also for arms trafficking, in a case tried in Vila Real.

The PSP officer was part of a group of 15 defendants who began to be tried in October 2022, at the Vila Real Court, for different crimes such as arms trafficking and brokerage, drug trafficking and passive corruption. The reading of the judgment took place on January 31, 2024, with the panel of judges sentencing the defendant police officer to one year and six months in prison, with a suspended sentence, for the crime of abuse of power, after having changed the initial charge of arms trafficking.

The Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) appealed the decision of the first instance, and, in a ruling dated May 27 and published this Monday on the website of the Porto District Attorney General's Office, the Guimarães Court of Appeal informs that it has decided to increase the sentence applied to the PSP agent to two years' imprisonment, suspended for the same period. At the time of his arrest by the Judicial Police, the defendant was working in the weapons and explosives unit of the PSP in Chaves.

The panel of judges in Vila Real decided to disqualify the crimes attributed to the agent, passing it to abuse of power instead of the practice , in effective competition, of a crime of arms trafficking and mediation and a crime of passive corruption that were initially pointed out by the MP.

The Court found that the police officer took advantage of his duties to obtain illegitimate benefits for himself or for people close to him, in relation to weapons and ammunition to which he had access, by acquiring such weapons for himself or for those persons, free of charge or at a reduced price in relation to their real value. To this end, when the holders of weapons and ammunition appeared for duty, instead of receiving them and registering their delivery in favour of the State, they acquired these weapons for themselves or for third parties.

As part of Operation “Iberia”, which took place in October 2020, the PJ announced the arrest of 52 people and the seizure of hundreds of weapons, with only 15 defendants being brought to trial. Of these 15 defendants, only two were sentenced to effective prison terms. The Court of Appeal has now increased the initial sentence of five years and two months in prison, applied in the first instance, to seven years in prison for the crime of drug trafficking and the crime of arms trafficking and brokerage.

This court also decided to increase the sentences of two other defendants , one to six years and two months in prison for committing a drug trafficking crime (in the first instance he had been sentenced to a sentence of four years and six months in prison), and another to four years and six months in prison, suspended for the same period, for drug trafficking (he had been sentenced to a sentence of one year and five months in prison suspended for the same period).

The appeals filed by the defendants were dismissed.

Of the remaining defendants, two women were acquitted and the others were convicted, but with suspended sentences, for different crimes, such as arms trafficking and brokerage or minor drug trafficking.