Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

The Greek police, EL.AS., was founded in 1984 and resulted from the merger of the Greek Gendarmerie, which had a military structure and hierarchy, with the City Police, a police force with a looser, rather civil-service structure and discipline.

As long as the two police bodies existed, there was rivalry between them, which could be described as competition and a race for first place in successes against crime.

No statistics are known on the performance of EL.AS. since its establishment, compared with the two old police bodies in the field of combating crime (without reference to the pursuit of dissenters and enemies of the “established order”).
The Greek police, although desired everywhere for protection against robber attacks and offenders, is perhaps not especially liked by most people, because of the poor conduct of police officers, the lack of professionalism, brutality, rudeness, indifference and corruption that spreads like gangrene through the police body.
In other words, as happens throughout the state machinery, the police is being tested by the crisis of institutions, principles and performance. The result of the crisis is that citizens’ trust in the guardians of calm and order is reduced.
In relation to the fight against police corruption, a special service has been established, the Internal Affairs Service, whose activity is laborious.
Specialists point out that professionalism is lacking among police officers and that training is inadequate. Delays are observed when the police is called to intervene, unwillingness by police officers to perform their duties and a more general relaxation of policing, because of which the citizen feels unsafe, becoming an unprotected victim of ruthless and numerous offenders who attack in an organized and systematic manner.
We know that the need for policing existed even in the fifth century BC, in Athens. It existed for the guarding of public buildings, the protection of the property of the inhabitants of the City and for other cases of safeguarding the peace, quiet and property of residents, Athenians and non-Athenians alike.
The Ephors in Sparta were also police authorities, while during the period of Roman rule and Byzantium policing was secured by the Eparchs, who also concentrated judicial authority in their person. During the endless dark period of Turkish occupation, policing was undertaken by the Asian conquerors, with the voivodes and aghas.
During the Revolution of 1821 such duties were assumed by local rulers, and under Kapodistrias the politarchs appeared, later replaced by the municipal police.
From 1849 until 1893 there was administrative police in Athens and Piraeus, and then the constabulary was established for the cities (the municipalities), which evolved into the City Police, and the gendarmerie for the countryside. Other police bodies also existed, such as the tourist police, with corresponding policing duties and, indicatively, the safeguarding of order and citizens’ quiet, the pursuit and prevention of crime, the protection of morals and traffic control.
Modern police officers are public employees, and for the promotion of their professional interests and rights the Panhellenic Federation of Police Officers, the Panhellenic Union of Disabled War Officers in Permanent and Wartime Availability of the Security Corps and the Panhellenic Federation of Police Employees were established.
Because of the lack of professionalism and training, the police is disliked, although the constant presence of the police officer is necessary so that peace and calm may exist and the conditions for smooth social coexistence may be safeguarded. For this reason police officers are needed with excellent training, developed professionalism, satisfactory pay, secured material and technical infrastructure and sound organization.
The country is required to have police officers with ethics, principles, respect for democratic structures, faith in the fundamental values of humanism and acceptance of citizens’ rights, which they must protect against any attacks, even from the state itself. The foremost duty of the police is the prevention of crime, but not by any means whatsoever; only by lawful means that do not affect human, political and civil rights and, in general, the fundamental rights of citizens.
Today, the police does not fulfil its mission harmoniously because, with brilliant and named exceptions (excellent police officers who, beyond their qualifications, possess a spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion), it is indifferent to citizens’ rights, which it very often violates with brutality.
Our police officers, lacking democratic education and the required professional training, slavishly imitate foreign models, mainly American ones, which they apply without adaptation against citizens under the pretext of combating crime, and especially organized crime. Thus the inviolability of the home is violated, the confidentiality of communications is not respected, the weak and those unable to mount a defence are pursued, many prominent and powerful persons are not pursued, there is no interest in attacks by offenders against citizens and, many times, instead of crime prevention, its promotion by certain police officers described as “perjurers” is observed.
Many police officers (so many in number that they affect the entire police force) behave brutally, as if serving in an authoritarian regime. Arrogance is excessive and rudeness is the rule during police checks. When most police officers, with very few exceptions, appear as witnesses before courts, carrying out the order of their service, they rarely testify without passion and even more rarely report the true facts without distorting them against the unfortunate accused who has come into their sights. As for their conduct toward lawyers, it is better that no one attempt to describe it, because it is truly indescribable. They regard the lawyer as their opponent by definition, because they were not taught the value of the institution in democratic states and the role the lawyer is called upon to play in the difficult struggle to reveal the truth, “without fear and without passion”. It would be good if the alteration, concealment and fabrication of evidence by police officers were the exception, with the result that serious crimes are not solved and, many times, innocent people are unjustly convicted with the familiar inhuman penalties that the judiciary loves. Cases of convictions of innocent persons because of the inadequacy or even malice of police officers exist in numbers far greater than would be tolerable in a society of justice and in a state governed by the rule of law.
Characteristic of the unacceptable situation prevailing in the police is that an officer has been chosen as president of the officers’ trade-union body because of whose conduct (against a citizen who suffered a ruptured eardrum after abuse by today’s elected president of the police officers!) our country was condemned (on 18.01.2007) by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and was internationally exposed. For this case, decision no. 2448/2010 of the Athens Administrative Court of Appeal was issued, by which the State was obliged to compensate the victim of police violence with a large sum of money [Nomika Epilekta: “Compensation for a victim of police violence”].
The police does not need brutal, perjuring and corrupt police officers. It needs staffing by capable and trained persons for the guarding of human and political rights, for the prevention of crime, the effective pursuit of offenders and the safeguarding of social peace, coexistence and cohesion, with faith in the high ideals of humanism, culture, morality and democracy.