And the 'Big Brother' of the portal spoke: the narco-floor of Salitre, 11, nominated for months for his violent coexistence, has finally been expelled. To get him out, the neighbors already voted in June; but no messages by phone to pay numbers... here, all by show of hands and aware in first person of the desperate situation. Until June, dozens of drug addicts knocked daily on the door of Raúl, a 57-year-old man who was arrested by the Police last Thursday, and who, after going out into the street, has not taken three days to try to return to his unhealthy headquarters.
"The cameras recorded him trying to sneak through the window that overlooks the patio," Ignacio Montero, son of the community president, warned ABC yesterday. It was the telematic doorman, operating 24 hours a day and with direct vision of the common rooms, who notified the agents. The residents of this farm in Lavapiés breathe, although they are still far from letting their guard down. The actions of the Narcotics subgroup of the National Police Center station, in collaboration with municipal uniforms from the Centro Sur district (in charge of collecting the horrible information), have ended with sleepless nights, fights, threats and endless damage inside the block. At least for now.
Beginning at the end, on Thursday the 24th, shortly after noon, officials from the two bodies broke into the building to dismantle the aforementioned drug point. Once inside, they went up to the second floor and burst the designated door with a battering ram. At the house, in addition to seizing cocaine base (crack), heroin pills and various supplies for its preparation and distribution, they ran into three people: the 'owner' Raúl, another man and a woman. The three told the agents that they lived there, but only the supposed owner (in reality, the apartment belongs to the family and his brothers had already asked him to leave) was arrested for a crime against public health.
The other two, as they do not have any legal relationship with the domicile nor are they an vacancy operation, can only be identified. "Half an hour after the police leave, the woman must be scared and she left voluntarily," Montero explained, before revealing the intention of the last person involved. "Raúl's family went to the house and spoke to him to warn him that if he stayed they would report him," she added. The truth is that the pressure got the better of him and that same afternoon they saw him leave loaded with suitcases. They quickly notified those affected and they came back to put up a new door.
The window through which Raúl tried to enter the apartment again. Now, it is walled up with a piece of wood. JOSÉ RAMÓN LADRA
Weigh to the fact that on Thursday night the building was safe again, the remnants of the drug maintained their siege throughout the weekend. The residents observed the wandering of some drug addicts, surprised by the null response on the other side of the house; and on Sunday, the telematic doorman (an innovative mechanism, hired for the first time to end a drug store and for which they have had to sign a contract of 15.000 euros) looted Raúl 'red-handed' in the same place from which three days before he had been shackled.
Not being able to open the door, he sought to enter through the window of the outer corridor itself. "Back in the day, they forced one of the bars in case one of the drug addicts had to access it and no one responded," recalled the president's son, not yet knowing how long he lost the property. For this reason, the screen installed in front of the portal entrance remains fully operational. From there, a worker from the Proserco-Fam company controlled the passage, connecting his base with the signal of all the telephones.
It will be the inhabitants of Salitre, 11, however, who decide on the future of their particular 'Big Brother'. If the contract is broken, a penalty must be paid, a circumstance that to date has not been contemplated. The heroin ghost, with flows at its highest peak of between 30 and 50 clients, does not disappear overnight. Today, a locksmith is scheduled to repair the access to the portal; normal, on the other hand, if he attends to the buzz of the neighborhood: "The key to the portal is held by half the neighborhood."
In this context, the Codi system (a service developed by Codivisión in 2018 to prevent usurpation in second homes or monitor luxury developments) has proven to have a deterrent effect, achieving a drastic drop in influx from the first days; and provide evidence decisively to bring the police investigation to a successful conclusion. Fear, in this humble building in the upper part of Lavapiés, has already given way to joy, typical of a dismantling obtained in record time. Time will tell if permanently.
