The Provincial Court has dismissed an appeal lodged by three local police officers in Torrevieja who are accused of hiding a traffic fine in order to prevent it from reaching SUMA and entering the payment system.
The Court of Instruction number 4 of Torrevieja, investigating the chain of events, concluded that there could have been irregularities in the chain of custody of public documents – a crime that, according to law, must be heard in court and therefore because such a crime may have taken place, the appeal of the officers was rejected and the court process must now continue.
The complaint against the three officers was filed by a fellow officer in 2013. The appeal claimed that no crime relating to custody of the document was committed, but simply an error since the paperwork pertaining to the traffic fine was not “hidden or destroyed” but instead filed away “by mistake.”
An expert report confirmed that there was a “manipulation of the computer system and the fine was removed from the Gespol application” by one of the officers being investigated. The events date back to November 30, 2012 when three police officers who were patrolling the intersection of Avenida de Rosa Mazón, saw that a driver did not respect a traffic signal. They stopped her to issue a fine and, although the driver did not refuse to cooperate, she did use what was described as “an ironic tone when addressing the agents”, assuring them that while she would sign for the fine, she was not going to pay it because she was going to call someone “known to her, and tell him what happened” so that he could clear the matter up.
The court confirmed that SUMA did not receive the sanction, that a former inspector and the driver were known to one another, and that at the time the events occurred, there was no physical record of the incident, only a mailbox without control or video surveillance, which the court heard sometimes overflowed with copies of fines falling to the ground. “Something inappropriate for a municipality like Torrevieja.”
To ensure that the sanction did reach its destination, one of the officers registered it in Murcia. “What the agent issuing the fine wanted – the investigation indicates – is that, given the low reliability shown by the mailboxes and the constant rumours about the disappearance of fines, there should be a record of his entry.” A fine of €200 arrived in a sealed envelope on December 27, 2012 but even despite this, it was “filed” by “error” in the computer system, supposedly by an officer who also already knew that the “disappearance” of the physical fine was being investigated by a court.
With the appeal rejected, the case will now continue.