“The number of police officers has been decreasing alarmingly in recent years due to negative staff turnover, while security challenges are intensifying,” said the former Director-General of the Police, Dr Anton Olaj, regarding the current state of the police, in light of addressing the pressing Roma issue. He also believes that partnership with people in ensuring security is all the more necessary and urgent in the current situation.
There has been a lot of talk about the pressing Roma issue over the last month, but with no concrete solutions in sight, and the people living in the south-east of Slovenia who are most affected by this issue still not feeling any safer, which is why we decided to speak to the former Director-General of the Police, Dr Anton Olaj. We wanted to know what obstacles police officers face in solving the problem, what the solutions to the problem are, and also if Roma integration can take place in an unregulated security situation.
Olaj firmly believes that the Roma problem is solvable, but he also believes that the systemic solutions known so far should be implemented. However, this is not what the new authorities want, because the measures and proposals that have been coordinated together with mayors, the Roma people and the civil society, are too demanding in their opinion and should be softer. “They do not want solutions that are logical, that would work on the ground, to be put through the legislative procedure,” Olaj pointed out, adding that it would be possible to later build further on these solutions. Half-solutions will certainly not be enough, because what the authorities have already come up with are compromise solutions.
Speaking at a recent urgent meeting of the Committee on the Interior, Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Olaj stressed that “the increase in excess acts by certain individuals from the Roma community is causing justified public concern, which is being reinforced by the government’s passivity in finding the necessary systemic solutions. As a consequence, there is also a legitimate feeling that if the police do not provide security to the extent expected, the people will provide it themselves.”
In his words, the fundamental duty of the police is “to ensure security and to work in partnership with municipalities, civil society and individuals, whose activities are also aimed at promoting the self-organisation of the population in terms of security.” He recalled that the police had set up a number of consultative security councils with municipalities, but that the absence of effective cooperation with the civil society and individuals was the main problem. The latter, he pointed out, “is due to the alarming decrease in the number of police officers in recent years, as a result of negative staff turnover, while security challenges are intensifying.” This makes it all the more necessary and urgent to work in partnership with the people to ensure security.
Stabilisation of the police recruitment system is needed
Olaj told us that, in his opinion, there has been little to no attention paid to the issue of staffing in the police, and now we are witnessing a situation where 800 police officers are leaving the system and 50 are coming in. “This is a serious problem.” At least there was no negative staff turnover during his term of office and even during that of his predecessor. Olaj made a good-faith appeal to the Committee to strengthen cooperation with the community. “I don’t know how they are going to guarantee security, but they are refusing to help citizens who want to help and contribute to security.” He believes that the police are simply incapable of doing it all on their own, given how low their numbers of staff are. The responsible Minister and the Prime Minister should, in his view, make a strong commitment in the area of staffing in order to stabilise the police staffing system.
The former Director-General of the Police also spoke with the competent minister on the issue of staffing in the police. “In a brief conversation, we raised the subject of the possibility, the consideration, of re-establishing a cadet school. In doing so, we could practically motivate pupils in primary school already to enrol in the secondary cadet school, and we would have 200 cadets a year, plus the others who would go to the police college, and the number would be 300.”
It is right that police officers should be given greater legal security in a systemic manner
As a police expert and former Director-General of the Police, at the meeting of the Committee, Olaj came to the public defence of the police officers against the various public doubts and criticisms about their work in relation to the current Roma issue. “My colleagues in blue have a very heavy workload, and their actions are very restricted by various regulations which, since the current government took office, have been creatively interpreted within the framework of the constitutional principle of the rule of law and the sub-principle of proportionality developed from it, even though it is clearly stipulated by law (Article 15 of the Act on Police Tasks and Powers) that police officers may only use their powers on the basis and to the extent stipulated by law.”
When using coercive means, he said, police officers are therefore rightly restrained by concerns “whether they have used them in a sufficiently proportionate manner, or whether, for example, some inspector from the Directorate of the Police and Other Security Tasks at the Ministry of the Interior will, after a prolonged examination, subjectively assess that they have violated the Constitution.” According to Olaj, the consequences of such an assessment can be dire, “the police officers can be dealt with by a specialised department of the public prosecutor’s office, and they can be sued for damages.” “The fact is that we need police officers. It is therefore right to provide them with greater legal certainty in a systemic way, thus enabling them to exercise their legal powers more vigorously, as well as provide greater security in intervening against violent criminals in the context of more effective general prevention,” Olaj stresses. He also is of the opinion, among other things, that it is possible to lead by encouragement and praise. He himself believes that the state of mind in the police has been better in the past. “It is a bit worse now, but I hope it will improve in the future. But the first thing that should be done is to rectify the personnel situation.”
The police, he said, can only provide short-term measures. “We will station more police officers in Kočevje, as well as in the Dolenjska region. These are short-term measures.” The Roma Union, on the other hand, needs to ensure the education of the Roma youth, the population. Olaj was also critical of the Human Rights Ombudsman: “When I was still Director-General, I remember that he did not understand when we wanted to take measures to get more pupils to finish primary school, and so we found measures that were of the nature that if you don’t send your children to school, you will have a social transfer in a different form. He showed a lack of understanding, and now he is doing it again,” he stressed, adding that in his view, Mr Svetina is not playing his part and is not doing the group of Roma children any favours.
Dr Olaj called on the head of the inter-ministerial Working Group on Roma Issues, State Secretary Ms Helga Dobrin, to regularly monitor the implementation of the tasks set out in the National Roma Action Plan 2021-2030 and to update it as soon as possible with measurable targets. “I have encountered a great deal of passivity on the part of ministries, which have done nothing at all, and now it is no different. At that time, I appealed to the authority of the Prime Minister and, in that way, forced them to just do something and so on. Dobrin should be very active here,” he believes.
In response to the question of whether Roma integration can take place in an unregulated security situation, he explained that the issues need to be pursued in parallel action. “If they, when the power changed, had adopted coordinated solutions, in the sense of at least opening up the legislative process, the effects would certainly have been felt within two years,” he said, adding that their proposals to tackle the Roma problem were indeed well thought out. “You provide a social transfer on the condition that you send your child to school. End of story – instead of paying the social transfer anyway. In Kočevje, it happened that someone said, ‘If you don’t provide me with water, my child won’t come to school. Children are a means of extortion, but they are also part of the family economy,” he pointed out, adding that since Roma families have more children, they are entitled to more social transfers. “So, they don’t have to work. If you worked for a whole month, you would get 200 euros more, but instead, you are at home. They have gone too far with welfare, it is not controlled,” he added critically.
Olaj also called on Dobrin to ensure that “the minutes of the meetings of the working group and sub-groups are published on the Ministry’s website with public access on a regular basis, clearly identifying the persons responsible in those ministries who are not ensuring the implementation of the planned tasks set out in the National Roma Action Programme.” “It is time to find enough political responsibility and implement the necessary systemic solutions for the benefit of all, especially the Roma community itself,” he believes.
Ž. N.
