“Let’s see what Vacas has done now.” This is the comment of the Madrid Metropolitan Police when the latest controversy surrounding this mayor, until this Friday, heads of the Special Services Unit, reaches their WhatsApp groups among colleagues. Last week, from his personal Facebook account, José Luis Rodríguez Vacas commented on a video in which he glorified Vox and wished Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez would leave “this country or this world”. The unit managed by Vacas is precisely responsible for escorting and escorting authorities like Sánchez when they travel through Madrid. “With an election so close and so much controversy, they couldn’t take another one,” explains a source from the panel. It is the fourth irregularity that has led to sanctions and files in the last year.
The 45-year-old mayor joined the Madrid Metropolitan Police in 2015. Until then, he had worked for the Alcalá de Henares police and also opposed the judiciary. He has a law degree. In 2017, he was appointed head of the San Blas-Canillejas unit, and four years later appointed commander of the corporate protection unit, which is responsible, among other things, for coordinating the protection of city councils and the city council. As his role in the body became more prominent, his controversies followed the same upward path.
The Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, bids farewell to new members of the 53rd class of the local police at the beginning of February. Eduardo Oyana (EFE)
So far it has come out of all of them unscathed. Having resisted for his position, he cannot easily be expelled from the panel or reduced in position without obtaining a firm opinion from the Department of Internal Affairs. This time the General Management has dismissed him from his position, but he must be transferred to another in the same category. This already happened when he was sanctioned with a week’s employment and salary in February 2022 for ordering four agents to attend the private funeral of a commissioner’s mother in full dress uniform. It was then that he was reinstated in his current position, the one who wished for the death of the one who is supposed to protect.
Recupera Madrid Councilwoman Marta Higueras has denounced irregularities in the city’s security forces on numerous occasions, and many of them included the name of Vacas. It was she who pointed out in September that he was one of those who did not meet the seniority requirement required for promotion to commissioner, despite being on the list of agents to be promoted. “This firing happened because we have elections just around the corner and this man keeps embarrassing the city police every time he gets the chance, his commanders don’t know what new news they will have about him the next day will find. he says. “This case forces us to think about what’s happening in the police leadership, why Vacas felt he was doing what he did with complete impunity,” he muses.
Some of the agents who treated him, who prefer not to give their names, affirm that he is an “intelligent” man but that they lose “that clumsiness” because he is “excessive”. He has sometimes stated that he took the security manager course because he intended to retire as a department store security manager. “The problem is that he acts like a 16-year-old boy and does things like that without thinking,” these sources say. His ideology is no secret, yet there is a post on his Facebook wall in which he refers to Podemos as “Potemos” and alludes to the fact that, like Mars, it is “red but devoid of intelligent life”.
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Sources inside the panel indicate that with the fall of the couples exchange club, he lost his support within the facility. In September last year, he caused an altercation at a venue in the capital when he was refused entry unless he paid like any other customer. This scene happened over a weekend when he was in charge as the chief of the city police service and threatened to conduct an inspection if they didn’t let him in for free. The cameras also showed that he was accompanied by an opponent of internal promotions, whom he had to assess in the tests.
“If any agent did that, he would have been more than sanctioned. What image does it convey of the body? What face do other cops go to real controls with afterwards? We’re fed up with the damage they’re doing,” said Jaime Johnson, general secretary of the Metropolitan Police Union. An information file has been opened for this fact and a possible sanction is pending on the internal affairs table.
An agent of the Madrid Local Police at a traffic stop in 2020. Jesús Hellín
The name Vacas also appeared in the complaint filed by the Unified Municipal Police Association in October against the Madrid police leadership for criminal association, bribery and interference in the recent mayoral elections. Vacas was also removed in March from the Comprehensive Security and Emergency Training Institute, which trains municipal agents from across the region, after he was denounced by several students for filtering exam questions. “After so many times, he’s reached the point where he thinks he’s untouchable,” says Más Madrid City Councilor Miguel Montejos, who believes we need to stop being “political” with the Metropolitan Police because “we’re the driving people crazy”.
The first reaction of Madrid City Council safety and emergencies delegate Inmaculada Sanz, after Cadena SER broke the news containing Vacas’ latest outbreak, was to attribute the comment to a “personal opinion”, although he assured that he “totally disagrees”. to reject” found “. The delegate defended that it was not within her power to dismiss him. At the end of Thursday, the situation became untenable and, late in the afternoon, the Madrid Metropolitan Police Headquarters informed Sanz of the dismissal of Rodríguez Vacas as head of the special service “for loss of confidence”. Socialist city councilor Ramón Silva defended that it was “pressure from community groups and the media” that led to “what was not possible later becoming feasible”. The opposition has also requested that he be expelled from the force, which is not an easy process as he is an official who won his opposition. Vacas’ next target is yet to be decided. The agents’ WhatsApp groups are ready to discuss the news.
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