Our View: Only a specialised police work will defeat organised crime

The measures to tackle organised crime and football violence gave the government a reason to justify the hiring of more policemen. A day after announcing the measures, new justice and public order minister Marios Hartsiotis said that another 500 police officers will be recruited, some on contracts and others as special constables. Though the justice ministry later clarified many of these will just replace those officers who are retiring.

For every problem faced by state, the answer invariably is the hiring of more workers. This misguided thinking persists long after it has been proved that the only thing achieved by hiring more workers is to increase state bureaucracy and the public payroll. Even in the age of digitalisation, the government seems hell-bent on hiring, instead of engaging in restructuring its departments and speeding up e-government.

In the case of the police force, it could be argued that more bodies are needed to carry out policing duties, which cannot be performed by computers. In theory, this is correct, but it is questionable whether hiring officers to patrol the streets, either on foot or by car – one of the measures announced by Hartsiotis – would help tackle organised crime. Having more officers on the streets is unlikely to make people feel safer, as some have maintained, when the police have failed to crack a single car arson case.

It is not more patrols the force needs, but more expertise in dealing with organised crime. It needs specially trained officers and people in charge that can think and act strategically. It also needs to hire professionals such as auditors, who can sift through accounts and criminal lawyers that would help build a strong case, something the attorney-general’s office, despite having numerous lawyers on its books, has not been very successful at doing. The AG’s office’s failure to successfully prosecute anyone involved in the banking collapse of 2013 shows its poor record.

Perhaps the way forward is the hiring of experts from abroad to train senior police officers, assist with criminal investigations and help devise a strategy for combating organised crime. The force has comprehensively failed in these respects and if it is ever to become an effective crime-fighting body it will have to seek outside help. It should sign a cooperation agreement with a force from a country that has cracked down on organised crime, so officers could learn new techniques and strategies.

This will not happen by making more young men and women go on the beat. Protection rackets, drug trafficking, loan sharking and human trafficking will not be stopped by more police patrols. It is only through specialised police work which utilises different forms of professional expertise that the authorities would have any realistic chance of effectively dealing with organised crime. It remains to be seen whether the government and the force will follow this path or give up the so-called crackdown once the force is boosted with more officers.