N/s for police training: ND, PASOK-KINAL and Hellenic Solution will vote in favor of the principle

The bill of the Ministry of Citizen Protection on police training, which is being voted on today in the Plenary Assembly, ensures a larger majority. ND, PASOK-KINAL and the Hellenic Solution are in favor of the principle. SYRIZA, KKE and MeRA25 will declare against the principle of the bill.

ND rapporteur Andreas Koutsoumbas said that the bill aims to upgrade and modernize the police training provided to the students of the Greek Police Officer School and Police Academy schools. “A new image of a police officer is being formed, with knowledge and the ability to respond to the new data of crime and delinquency”, said the ND MP who emphasized that the bill is a real breakthrough as modern programs will provide all the necessary supplies to the new police officer , through appropriate training, in order to properly carry out his work, in the prevention and deterrence of crime. “The goal is to reshape the character of the Officer School, the training provided so that with the high quality training provided officers can respond to the developments in the field of security. It provides those means with the curricula and with the cognitive multiple subjects of high quality which are taught to provide students with theoretical and practical training,” said the ND lecturer. Referring to the Police Academy, Andreas Koutsoubas said that with the provisions, the regulation of its organization and operation is being attempted with the aim of training, retraining, training and specialization of the staff to deal with incidents, that is, proper training so that they can respond to the tasks their. “The Police Academy will be able to develop collaborations and actions with universities, other institutions, with research centers. This was what we were talking about, for the Police to open its wings and become open to society to new challenges,” said the ND MP .

“The bill tries to create a hybrid model of training, where officers will be trained in a structure, which in terms of declarations will look like a university, but it won’t be. In reality it will be a school under the minister,” said SYRIZA’s rapporteur Dionysis Kalamatianos and explained his party’s position: “Is it possible, then, is it possible for such an educational unit to lead to a real reformation and professional improvement of the Police? Obviously not”. The SYRIZA MP said that “the structure of the Officers’ School has a strong imprint of the new law on universities. At the same time, it is combined with the militaristic and authoritarian approach to the training of Police personnel. The draft law creates new categories of faculty members by cultivating customer expectations , reproduces multi-speed policing, intensifies the dualism and discrimination between police and constables, takes officers out of the Police Academy and leaves only constables in it. The supposed reform that the bill heralds concerns only the Officer School. For the first time once this school ceases to be part of the Police Academy. It will now be a separate educational entity, while normally the reform should concern the Police Academy as a whole.”

“We will vote on the bill. We will vote on it first of all for symbolic reasons, because in fact it comes after twenty years – and more – and ratifies successive legislations of the PASOK governments”, said the special buyer of PASOK-KINAL Giorgos Kaminis who however, he noted that “during the drafting of this bill, the government did not look to draw some information from other legal classes, which certainly have something to teach us.” PASOK’s special buyer submitted a series of improvement proposals, such as the Educational Council of the Officers’ School having a say in drawing up the School’s budget, the Commandant or Deputy Commandant of the School not being a member of the Quality Assurance Unit of the Officers’ School, because that is how they are and judging, that an external evaluation of the School be carried out by the National Authority of Higher Education at regular intervals, that a member of the academic community be added to the disciplinary councils of the Faculty members of the School.

“A change is foreseen in the organizational model, but not in the philosophy of police training”, said the expert buyer of the KKE Nikos Papanastasis who added: “The goal of the new regulation is obvious. It is the response of police training to the new methods of repression, which are inextricably linked with the overall anti-people policy of the government, but also with the strategy of the European Union in the conditions of the 21st century, for the single security area. It is also connected with the establishment, by the European Union, of uniform standards in police organization, training and operation and action. All of these are goals that respond to the vital, for the European Union, need to face workers’ action in the conditions that are taking shape and are causing tremors in the armor of the European urban edifice.” The position of the KKE, said Mr. Papanastasis, is that repression is part of the policy of the governments that serve the bourgeoisie and “this direction is not negated by any, but any upgrading, either educational or organizational, of the Police Schools. It aims together with the integration policies and practiced anti-people policies to maintain its sovereignty in the evolving conditions of the 21st century, which will be the century of the people’s victory against the current barbaric system of capitalism.”

“I am listening carefully to my colleagues mainly from the Left. I want to ask the following. Do we want a Police in Greece or not? And what kind of Police do we want? We want a Police with educated, serious, cultured, disciplined officers who can manage difficult situations and crises or do we not? Because so far SYRIZA and the KKE have not understood whether we really want a School of Police Officers or Schools of Constables or not”, remarked the expert buyer of the Hellenic Solution Antonis Mylonakis. The deputy said that his party will vote for the bill, because it moves in the right direction, and he emphatically raised the issue of the salaries of the officers and executives of ELAS and the Armed Forces. He also asked that the degree of those who have graduated from the School after the passing of this law be equated with the degree of those who have finished the school before the law was passed.

“It is a bill that has as its exclusive and basic purpose the further militarization of the Greek Police and correspondingly is the Ministry’s targeting of the Police Academy”, said MeRA25 special buyer Fotini Bakadima. Among other things, the Member of Parliament of MeRA25 suggested that the control of the study and training programs of the police forces should be done by consultative councils of elected citizens with a decisive role. Above all, to ensure continuous training of police officers in international human rights standards. Fotini Bakadima also called for the abolition of special bodies, such as the MAT, the DELTA, Z, DIAS groups, the disarmament of the police officers who participate in daily patrols and the social control of the training and the work of the police with the DIASKEP (Deliberative Councils Elected Citizens).