By: Dr Vinko Gorenak
These days, I am receiving more questions related to police work in Roma settlements, specifically with the Roma. This is, of course, the result of the recent attempt to arrest or detain a young Roma in Kočevsko, which ended with a brutal attack on the police officers. Something similar happened months ago when two police officers retreated to safety in their car from attackers in a public garage in Ljubljana.
Not just journalists or perhaps police experts, I am referring to those who are not or no longer employed in the police force. Even ordinary people are questioning what is actually happening with the police as an institution and, of course, with the police officers themselves. After all, the police are a repressive apparatus of the state, primarily responsible for maintaining general order and peace, which, in addition to the classic public order and peace, must also include crime, border control, traffic safety, and general compliance with the legislation passed by the legislative branch. The police, therefore, have appropriate legal authority, adequate equipment, and police officers should at least be properly trained to perform all these tasks. And let’s not forget, they should also be adequately rewarded. So, where are the reasons for incidents like the one in the public garage in Ljubljana and the recent one in Kočevje, where police officers either withdrew from performing their duties or were even attacked? Both incidents have one common denominator: police duties were not properly carried out in either case, and we cannot simply point the finger at the Roma, who were not even involved in the Ljubljana case.
Could something like this have happened in the former state?
Given that I served as a police officer, more precisely a militiaman (so that no one accuses me of denying it) in the former state, and also as a police chief at the local level in Celje, I can say that the chances of something like this happening were significantly lower, but they were still there. I remember a case from the early days of my leadership of the police at the local level. In a tavern, two police officers withdrew from intervening against a group of brawlers who, upon the arrival of the two police officers, united in an attack on the two officers, forcing them to temporarily retreat. After a thorough analysis of the situation, I commended the police officers but also initiated disciplinary action against the duty officer at the police station. The duty officer, after all, replaces the chief in their absence. Audio recordings of conversations showed that the duty officer had not done his job, as he had not gathered enough information during the complaint to determine what was really happening in the pub and had sent two poorly equipped officers to the scene with the instruction: “There is a public disturbance at pub XY, go check it out.” Had the duty officer collected enough information from the complainant, he would have known that eight people were involved in the fight, using sticks and knives, with two already injured. In such a case, he should have sent at least six to eight police officers equipped with all necessary protective gear and legally permitted means for intervention. Because he failed to do this, it was he who sent the two poorly equipped officers into a situation where they had to retreat temporarily. As the local police chief, I gave clear instructions to duty officers on how to act in such situations, and nothing like this happened again during my tenure. The duty officer, shortly before retirement, ended up with a reprimand before dismissal, as it was called back then. Is something similar evident in the case of the public garage in Ljubljana and the recent event in Kočevje? More on that in conclusion.
What do the studies show?
I had the privilege of lecturing for twenty years at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security. Of course, these lectures were primarily aimed at future police leaders, and I took full advantage of the practical knowledge I gained from leading the police at the local and regional levels, as well as from my positions as State Secretary and Minister of the Interior, as this gave me an overview of the situation in the police from local to state level. In this context, I would like to mention two studies.
One day, a policewoman from the Murska Sobota area approached me, asking if she could do her diploma with me. Of course, I immediately agreed and asked her what the topic of her thesis would be. She was not entirely sure but mentioned she wanted to write about how serious the problems with the Roma were in the Murska Sobota area. We agreed that she would compare the number of criminal offenses, public order violations, and the number of criminal offenses committed by the Roma over a certain period, compared to the rest of the population, of course, in relation to their respective numbers. The result of her thesis was clear: the Roma only stood out in the case of traffic offenses, and not at all in the other two cases. The student eventually realised that the Roma are not more problematic in every aspect, as she initially thought in her role as a police officer.
The second example relates to a master’s thesis, where my student studied the relationship between the Roma, police officers, and the rest of the population, particularly focusing on the issue of mutual trust. I do not remember the details, but one of the results was that the Roma have much greater trust in police officers and the rest of the population than the latter two groups have towards the Roma.
This, of course, raises the question of why this is so, especially why there are so many problems with the Roma in Dolenjska and why such problems do not exist with the Roma in Murska Sobota, particularly in their village of Pušča, which I visited in 2012 as the Minister of the Interior. If no one had told me that Pušča was a Roma settlement, I would not have known I was walking through one.
And why such differences between the Roma in Dolenjska and Prekmurje? The answer lies in the fact that seventy years ago, local authorities in Prekmurje decided to build sewage systems, electricity, schools, kindergartens, and more in the Pušča settlement. Nothing similar has happened in Dolenjska to this day.
The Swiss Example
In the context of the attack on police officers in Kočevje, I would like to mention an experience from Switzerland. In 1992, I visited the police in the Thurgau canton by Lake Constance with a group of police experts. I asked the police chiefs for a conversation with a police officer from a small village. This happened. It was a local police outpost in a village, and only this one officer worked there. Among the many questions I asked him was how he handles serious public order violations. He answered that in such cases, he does not call his colleagues from the centre but handles the intervention himself. I looked at him in amazement and repeated the question, asking what he does when several people are fighting in a pub. He repeated his answer that he handles it himself. I did not understand this, so the regional police chief, who was accompanying me and had a Slovenian wife, intervened and explained the situation. He said something like this: “You see, the situation here is different from Slovenia. This is a police officer who has been working here for thirty years, and everyone knows and respects him. When he enters a pub where a fight is happening, the fight ends because he is an authority whose presence everyone respects. If someone tried to attack him, the vast majority of those present would side with him and protect him, as he is their police officer.” I was stunned and somewhat ashamed, as this was said by their police chief who knew both their circumstances and ours in Slovenia. Can we draw any conclusions from this, and compare the case in Switzerland with the cases in Ljubljana and Kočevje? I presented this case to my students every year in my lectures, especially to future police chiefs, and asked them who should do what to achieve such a situation in Slovenia. Usually, I did not get an answer, so I told them that we cannot change people, but we can change police work. Unfortunately, things have not improved to this day.
Where are the reasons for this situation?
Of course, I do not presume that I will list all the reasons for the state of our police in this article, but I will mention just a few that have led to a situation in recent years where police officers abandon their official duties or become victims while performing them.
Let me remind you of what happened during the last Janša government from 2020 to 2022. As we all know, there were massive and violent protests during this time, where the police acted according to their powers. It is not irrelevant to note that during similar events in 2012-2013, when I was the Minister of the Interior, as well as during the aforementioned period of the third Janša government, far more police officers were injured than violent protesters. The official numbers are publicly known. Of course, we must ask who was more violent, the police officers or the violent protesters. Throughout all of this, we witnessed police officers being insulted, disrespected, and more in Slovenia. We did not see anything like this in Brussels, Paris, or Berlin, where police officers acted decisively, using all available coercive measures.
During the last Janša government, the violent protests during the COVID crisis were particularly massive. As mentioned, the police officers acted within their legal powers. And what happened after the Golob government took office?
The head of the coalition personally received some of the organisers of the violent protests, like Zoran Stevanović, and expressed his support for them. They refunded the fines already paid by the violent protesters, and initiated criminal proceedings against about fifteen police chiefs who led the officers lawfully against the violent protesters. Such actions are, of course, a gross insult to the police chiefs and all police officers. As a result, police officers today prefer to look the other way rather than deal with various violators. This is more than alarming for the safety of the state and its citizens.
Police officers are not the problem, leadership in the police is
In light of my practical experiences described above, as well as what happened in the public garage in Ljubljana and recently in Kočevje, I am increasingly convinced that the field officers performing daily police duties are not particularly problematic. Many diploma and master’s theses on this topic persuade me that our police force has an issue with its leadership cadre. It is not just that there are far too many of them compared to the number of field officers, but the problem especially lies in the leadership at the local, regional, and national levels. In both the Ljubljana case and the Kočevje case, in my opinion, the local or even regional leadership failed. It is unacceptable that only two police officers were sent to deal with a group of violent individuals in a public garage in Ljubljana, forcing them to retreat. Similarly, it is unacceptable that only a few police officers were sent to arrest and bring in a young Roma person in a Roma settlement, resulting in them being massively attacked. There should always be a safety assessment by police chiefs, who need to evaluate all the circumstances of a security event and send a sufficient number of police officers with the right equipment to ensure that the task can be carried out lawfully and effectively. In the case of the public garage in Ljubljana, the analysis by police chiefs concluded that “the police officers were correct in retreating,” with which I agree. But what is missing is the essential point, which is the responsibility of the police chiefs themselves for sending only two poorly equipped officers against a horde of violent individuals in that garage. What the police analysis of the Kočevje event will reveal remains to be seen, but I suspect the police chiefs will wash their hands of it one way or another, even though it is evident that they are the ones responsible for the attack on the officers.
What should be done?
The general public belief, conveniently echoed by many politicians, is that the police are the ones who can and must bring order among the Roma. However, the aforementioned example from Pušča near Murska Sobota convinces us of something quite the opposite. Furthermore, it has been scientifically proven that the police are the last in line when it comes to solving the Roma problem. The police must act repressively, as they would with all other citizens. However, before police intervention, measures are needed in the areas of infrastructure, education, healthcare, internal affairs, and many other areas to change the situation among the Roma; only then should the police step in. This is also highlighted by the findings of the commission led by Dr Anton Olaj, a long-time police officer and police chief in the Novo Mesto area, who was the general director of the police during the last Janša government and also led the mentioned commission. The findings and recommendations of this commission are clear and practical. The commission prepared a series of specific amendments to laws and regulations that should have been sent into the proper procedure by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, and the Ministry of the Interior. However, in the coalition, all of this was thrown into the trash. A group of mayors also took up the proposed legislative changes and sent them to the coalition, but they met the same fate. Today, they cry and moan that something needs to be done.