Police Diversity

Via the Athens News

The demographic of Greece has changed, with 10% of the population now being non-Greek. There is obviously much talk about the benefits and problems that that diversity brings including in the police force. New legislation has been passed that SHOULD allow non-Greek citizens to enrol in the police academy but the Public Order ministry says that the changes only allows co-operation with other countries in law enforcement and NOT a career choice for non-Greek citizens.

[To clarify: Non-Greek citizens means people who have long-term or permanent residency in Greece but do not have citizenship]

However, the Pan-Hellenic Federation of Greek Police Officers (POASY) is in favour of recruiting immigrants into the police force.The vice-president, Constandinos Voudouris said

We, as a federation, wanted new measures to permit the hiring of immigrants who reside in Greece.

The 40,000 strong union argued that immigrants would be an asset to the force, increasing trust between themselves and other immigrants and helping to overcome barriers of language.

The are many Greek immigrants who are police officers in other countries around the world and this is something that can happen here too. Now the law has been changed, it’s simply a matter of political will

A study conducted by POASY and Antigone (an NGO based in Thessaloniki) found that a majority of police officers said that diversity would lead to more communication problems caused by language barriers. I would think that people who are finally accepted into police training would have excellent Greek language skills, so I don’t see that that should be a problem. Another concern of the officers was that their non-Greek officers might be more likely to

be approached by members of their own group for favours than their non-migrant colleagues

I think these concerns only reflect a resistance to change and not knowing what to expect when working closely with people of other nationalities. Corruption is a general problem in the force and one that needs addressing and immigrant police officers would be no more or less likely to succumb.

I have a very good friend who worked as part of a large team with the British police force in the days when it was diversifying its own demographic. She worked with them to overcome some of the mistrust, misconceptions and misunderstandings that arose from the new situations. Although racism has never been stamped out completely, their work went a long way in making the changes as smooth as possible.

in the same survey, the officers were optimistic about the fact that

more migrant colleagues in the force will increase our expertise in inter-cultural issues which will help prevent possible problems with the migrant population at an early stage.

I will add the link to the full article at the Athens News when it comes out online later this week.

Technorati: Greece, police, diversity, law