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

On 07.03.2012, I passed through the entrance of the police aliens directorate (on Petrou Ralli) in order to handle an extremely urgent case involving an unjustly detained foreign national with serious health problems, from which his life was in immediate danger. The foreign national had been released by two appellate decisions, but the administration, and more specifically the police, had a different opinion and thus the foreign national, although he had a residence permit in the country, had to remain imprisoned... It is a fact that I rarely go to police stations, police directorates, and public services in my capacity as a lawyer, because I avoid having to face, without restrained rage and extreme agitation, the insolence, provocativeness, and stupidity of public employees and especially police officers, who provoke without reason through arrogance and a mania for displaying authority and power. There is a small minority of public officials and police officers who confirm the opposite rule through impeccable official conduct, courtesy, willingness, and ability in the performance of their duties. Yet this is an extreme minority that cannot improve the wretched state created by the general lack of willingness among public employees to fulfill their official duties, a category that includes lawyers as well as prosecutors and judges. This time I did not manage to cancel, or avoid, my visit to the service that handles the policing of foreign nationals. It was about 19:30 when I entered the courtyard of that police directorate, after first undergoing a thorough check at the gate, with inspection of my identity card and careful recording of my "details". Because of the seriousness and urgency of the case, I was accompanied by three other lawyers, one of whom was acting as interpreter, who, like me, were checked in order to be allowed entry into the police directorate. All four of us went up to the floor of the building indicated to us by some witty police officer and asked, once the competent person had been found, to carry out our duties, our work, within the specified hours, which ended at 21:00. A young police officer informed us that we would have to wait a little, because a check was being carried out on the foreign nationals who had just arrived. In reality, the wait was a means of proving the force and police authority that requires anyone wishing to approach it to suffer inconvenience. In other words, we had to age there before beholding our masters, who were willing to receive supplications, requests, and pleas. After more than an hour had passed, one of us knocked on an iron door and asked the police officer who appeared sluggishly to specify how much longer we had to wait in order to complete our work. The police officer, visibly unwilling and intensely annoyed, condescended to whisper that "they would not be long". We had to wait for another hour, at which point a twenty-five-year-old police officer appeared, holding a battered large notebook with lined pages, in which he recorded our details after lazily checking our identity cards. Because those details did not seem sufficient to him, however, he began sadistically asking us one by one, without haste, for our father's name, mother's name, home address, and telephone number, which he also recorded in his notebook, while simultaneously making official and grand declarations about his kindness in serving us, when in fact we should have waited even after 23:00 because "that is how it must be". Perhaps his colleagues would allow us, late, if they wished, to be "served"... I observed in a calm voice that it was not reasonable to record so many details in the lined notebook, pointlessly prolonging our stay, because our details had already been checked upon entry into the police building and also by him through examination of our identity cards. The police officer, after repeating that he was "doing us a great favor" by not leaving us to wait for more hours and that we ought to be grateful to him and his service for their leniency toward us, stated that "you lawyers have learned to wait, so you must be patient". When I replied that I had not learned to wait pointlessly, he answered, with the familiar police insolence, that "it is never too late". Then he took his notebook and left, while the time of torturous waiting continued, adding another hour of inactivity in a miserable room distinguished by its filth. After our patience and nervous endurance had been tested, hours later, late around midnight, we managed to complete part of our work and left exhausted, thinking that our country is dominated by bureaucracy, lust for authority, authoritarianism, incompetence, and rudeness, with no hope of correction. We will see improvement if the mentality changes, if the incompetent are driven back to their respective places of origin, if insolent, rude, and oath-breaking public employees ("officials") are punished, and if a truly democratic and modern understanding of the so-called duty and role of the state is established.