The courts have confirmed a one-month suspension sanction against Víctor Duque, sub-inspector of the National Police and general secretary of the Federal Police Union, for reprimanding an officer who had asked for his DNI during an altercation at the Algeciras Fair 2018. The Madrid City Council has rejected the appeal of the leader of the police union against his sanction for serious disregard, after a criminal court also imposed a fine of 180 euros for disobedience. Duque is also awaiting trial for alleged embezzlement in the management of union funds.
The agents reported that that night they went to the Fair of the city of Cadiz because of an altercation between the doorman of a tent there and several men. One of them was Duque, who reacted by reprimanding the national police who arrived and asking them to identify themselves. “You are a child, don’t tell me what to do because I knew it before you were born. “You have no idea who I am,” he told one of them. He continued with the curses when they asked him for his ID: “I’m not going to identify myself to you, you’re a useless child. If you want, you can arrest me.
The words of this sub-inspector were included in the police report and had two different consequences: criminal and disciplinary. In the first, a court in Algeciras imposed a fine of 180 euros for the crime of disobedience for refusing to identify himself in response to repeated requests from the police. In the second, the General Directorate of Police imposed a suspension of his duties for one month, a procedure that reached the High Court of Justice of Madrid after an appeal by the Secretary General of the UFP.
The judges, as elDiario.es was able to verify, confirmed his sanction and now the union leader of the National Police will be able to go to the Supreme Court if he wants to continue pursuing his trial. Among other arguments, the sub-inspector considered that his criminal conviction prevented him from being sanctioned in a disciplinary manner, that there were formal irregularities in the procedure, that the fight at the fairgrounds had nothing to do with his status as an agent of the authority or that he punished him disproportionately and without evidence.
The response of the Contentious and Administrative Chamber of the High Court of Madrid, as this newspaper has been able to verify, has been to reject all his allegations. The fact that he was fined for criminal reasons, the judges consider, does not “extinguish” his disciplinary responsibility, and the fact that he was not on duty that night “does not mean that it is not possible to see that he acted as a police officer” when he reprimanded the officer who wanted to identify him.
Throughout the proceedings, the General Directorate of Police stated that his behavior was “inadmissible,” accusing Víctor Duque of “completely lacking self-control and discipline.” The “subjective intention” of the UFP general secretary in addressing the police officer in this way, explains the resolution now upheld in court, was “to affirm his status as the highest union leader” in front of a younger officer. It also accused him of transgressing the “elementary values of the police” of “service, dignity and loyalty.”
Criminal case for embezzlement
The disciplinary proceedings began several years after the events, when his conviction for the crime of disobedience was declared final. The ruling of the High Court of Madrid, in addition to confirming the sanction of 30 days of suspension, also imposes the costs of the proceedings up to a maximum of 800 euros, although you can always appeal to the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court.
In addition to this disciplinary procedure, Víctor Duque is being prosecuted by the Madrid Court of Instruction for allegations of embezzlement in his management of the Federal Police Union. The case, currently awaiting trial, began in 2018. Throughout all these years, Duque has continued to lead the organization, which is represented on the Police Council and has several spokespeople as collaborators in television programs on crime-related events.
In this legal case, Duque is accused of spending the union’s money, from dues and public subsidies, to live a life of luxury. His Secretary of Organization and Finance, José Manuel Heredia, is also accused. Among the expenses that the magistrate has examined in this case while awaiting trial, there is the suspicion that she used the union card she had to buy jewelry or pay for meals and drinks, which, according to the reports collected in the case, “would not be justified by a “A simple union meeting meal constitutes a disproportionate expense for one’s own benefit.”
