Lisbon's Mayor Says Not One of the 200 Police Promised in May Has Arrived, and Thursday's Meeting With the PSP Chief Ended Without Agreement

Carlos Moedas met the national director of the Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP, Public Security Police) on Thursday to press for the extra officers the government promised Lisbon in May. According to SIC Notícias, the meeting closed without agreement, with the mayor and the police leadership visibly apart on what the capital's policing situation actually is.

The promise dates to 12 May, when Prime Minister Luís Montenegro received the mayors of Lisbon and Porto at São Bento and announced that the two PSP metropolitan commands would each be reinforced with 200 new officers. Lisbon was separately promised 100 additional municipal police, and Porto 80. Montenegro set no deadline, explaining that the allocation depended on the two PSP recruit courses scheduled for 2026.

More than three months on, the mayor's count is blunt. "This government promised me 200 extra public security police in Lisbon, we still have none. It promised 100 municipal police, we still have none," Moedas said this week, adding that "the time has come" for the promise to be kept.

The ministry's answer: it is already happening

The office of Interior Minister Luís Neves rejects that reading outright. In a written response to Observador, it said the reinforcement "is already being put into effect" and that since June the PSP has moved units of the Corpo de Intervenção (Intervention Corps, the force's public-order reserve) into patrol duties in the busiest parts of the city.

Security in Lisbon, the ministry argues, "does not depend on a single measure or on a future date." A plan to reorganise the city's network of esquadras (police stations) is being drawn up and will be presented to the city council shortly, intended to free officers from desk duties for patrol work. The ministry says any changes will follow the principle of increasing, not reducing, police presence on the ground.

On numbers, it points to the second PSP recruit course, due to finish at the end of 2026, which it says will bring in around six hundred new officers and allow several territorial commands, Lisbon's among them, to be strengthened. PSP national director Luís Carrilho told SIC Notícias on 26 August that he could not yet guarantee Moedas's 200 officers would reach Lisbon before the year is out.

Two social democrats, two accounts of the same city

What makes the standoff unusual is that both men serve PSD-led executives. At a Lisbon Municipal Police colloquium in May, Moedas argued that insecurity must be fought "whether it is perception or the reality of the facts"; minutes later Neves, a former national director of the Polícia Judiciária (Judicial Police), said Lisbon "does not have more crime than in the past".

A second front is the return of the guardas-noturnos, the licensed night watchmen who patrol residential streets. The city says hiring 56 of them waits only on a portaria (ministerial order) regulating their training, which sits with the Interior Ministry. The ministry concedes the regulation is unfinished but says it has been outstanding for eleven years, that the current team took office only in February, and that it expects to close the file by the end of September. Lisbon currently has 11 of the 56 night watchmen registered nationwide.

What this means for foreign residents

• Timing: If you have read that Lisbon is getting 200 more officers, the useful detail is that none has yet been posted. The realistic window is the end of 2026, and even that is not guaranteed.
• What has actually changed: The visible increase in the Baixa and other central districts since June comes from Intervention Corps units redeployed to patrol, not from new hires. Redeployments can be reversed.
• Station closures: The esquadra reorganisation plan is worth watching if you live outside the centre. The ministry promises more officers on the street, but reorganisation has historically meant fewer buildings.
• Who to call: Municipal police handle urban order and parking; crime reports go to the PSP. That division is not changing.

The next test is procedural rather than rhetorical. The reorganisation plan has to reach the câmara, the night-watchmen order has to be published, and the recruit course has to end. Until one of those happens, Lisbon's security debate stays where it has been since the Baixa shooting in August: a promise on one side, a headcount on the other. Porto's mayor has taken a different route, asking to put officers on the city payroll outright.