The Hungarian police force

I hate to think how many people have been in charge of the 42,000 strong Hungarian police force in the last few years. Most of them were fired after a year. A few days ago there were rumors that the currrent one is going to get the sack after the terribly mishandled case of arson and murder in Tatárszentgyörgy. Well, he was spared, unlike his predecessor, who was fired because of the alleged rape of a young woman in downtown Pest by five policemen. It wasn't true, but Ferenc Gyurcsány somewhat hastily fired the police chief. Then there are all the changes at the head of the ministry of law and order. Perhaps this is the best translation (however obviously beholden to the powerful TV franchise--now, I understand, with a British version) of the ministry that was created by combining the ministry of justice with the ministry of the interior. The latter, as is the case in most European countries, was in charge of the police. MDF and its veteran politician Péter Boross, who briefly headed the interior department in the Antall government, are convinced that all the current problems of the police stem from Gyurcsány's decision to get rid of the ministry of the interior. If I remember correctly, there have been at least three "law and order" ministerial changes, but the effectiveness of the police hasn't improved.

What's wrong with the Hungarian police force? Some claim that the force is simply not big enough. However, I just read an article by two law professors specializing in criminal law and police work arguing that Hungary's police force is plenty big enough. For every 100,000 citizens there are 420 policemen, which makes Hungary one of five best endowed countries in Europe. Ahead of Hungary are Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The average in the European Union is 360. In fact, in the Scandinavian countries the police force is half the size of the Hungarian: 210 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The number of criminal cases has been dropping in the last few years, and the police have a good track record in solving murders--over 90%.  When it comes to robbery, however, the success rate is only about 20%. (See Géza Finszter and László Korinek, "Rekviem egy rendőrségért," Népszabadság, February 28, 2009.)

What does a young man have to do in order to become a police officer in Hungary? Plenty. He not only has to finish high school but he has to take his matriculation examinations before entering police academy for two years. Then how is it possible that police work is so often unprofessional? Apparently most of what the cadets learn is academic--theory, not practice. Law and sociology at the expense of nitty gritty police work. Another problem is that too many policemen are paper pushers and not enough patrol the streets. Perhaps the Budapest police chief exaggerated the other day when in an interview he said that 90 people supervise 120! But above all, say Finszter and Korinek, the police force doesn't function well because the whole structure is wrong. Basically, the strictly hierarchical structure inherited from the Kádár regime cannot deal with the problems of today. The disaster of the mob attack on the MTV headquarters in September 2006 awakened the government to the fact that something must be done: the Hungarian police cannot handle, for example, riots. They don't have the equipment and the whole structure is too cumbersome to act swiftly and effectively. Moreover, the men don't really know what to do in a situation like that. So a committee was set up: historians, sociologists, former high ranking police officers, and legal experts put their heads together and came up with, according to the authors, impressive recommendations. The government received the committee's document which to this day is gathering dust somewhere in one of the ministries.

Then every time there was a new police chief he tinkered with the internal structure of the force. To no avail. A central command can't effectively allocate officers to places where they are really needed. The local cop on the beat can't morph overnight into a member of a riot squad. Just to give one truly outlandish example, during the disturbances at the television station policemen from outside Budapest were ordered to the capital where they promptly got lost.

Therefore more and more people are recommending a decentralized police force. Each big city or even middle-sized town should have a police force of its own. Several villages nearby could share two or three policemen on duty all the time. Of course, for serious disturbances one would still need hundreds of policemen to make sure that a demonstration is well covered. Finszter and Korinek suggest a regional police force that could be called upon in time of need. Such a thorough reorganization of the police force would need time. Perhaps a decade. A step by step strategy should be initiated; implementation should be done incrementally.

As far as I can see there is no visible sign of such a strategy as yet, and if I'm not mistaken the tinkering continues even after the latest jolt at Tatárszentgyörgy. Meanwhile they are madly looking for those who burned down the house of the Roma family and killed father and son. By now they're talking about serial murderers, highlighting the similarities between Tatárszentgyörgy and Nagycsécs. It is hard to judge the cause of the policemen's lackadaisical handling of the case. Was it because they didn't care very much about the Gypsy victims? Was it because they were lazy? Was it because they were incompetent? Were they misled by the doctor who didn't notice the gunshot wounds inflicted by a hunting rifle? What about the firemen who never checked whether the fire was a case of arson? There are too many questions. Meanwhile I don't believe that there will be real improvement in the performance of the Hungarian police anytime soon. The force will receive an additional billion forints next year. They will be able to hire 1,600 new officers, but as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog the problem is not really the size of the force. Meanwhile, the majority of Hungarians think that with a larger and more effective force "crimes against the Roma" can be eliminated. I very much doubt it.

Comments

[Mark]

"Perhaps the Budapest police chief exaggerated the other day when in an interview he said that 90 people supervise 120!"

My understanding is that this is not an exaggeration. A few years ago I was sort of "seconded" to a seminar (as I think the nearest available Hungarian specialist) to discuss the problems of the police force. Some of the information compared police numbers in the UK and Hungary. We were told there are around two-and-half times the number of police employed per head of population in Hungary than in the UK, yet there are actually fewer police on the beat relative to population in Hungary! This was greeted by most of those present (though not me, I have to say) with complete astonishment.

[gabor laszlo]

Politikai bűnöző banda gyűrte maga alá a rendőrséget

A rendőrséget az elmúlt évek szociálliberális kormányzásai szisztematikusan juttatták oda, hogy nem képes a jelenlegi helyzetben hatékony munkát végezni - mondta el Kövér László, a Fidesz Országos Választmányának elnöke a hírTV Péntek 8 című műsorában. Kövér szerint a hazánkban kialakult válság jelentős okozója az a közgazdász elit, amely hagyta, hogy Gyurcsány-kormány 2006-ig folytassa a felelőtlen költekezés politikáját.
Utoljára frissítve: 2009. február 28., 11:15
nyomtat küld

Kövér László Kuncze Gábor egykori SZDSZ-elnök kijelentésével kapcsolatban elmondta, bízik benne, hogy 2002-höz hasonlóan az MSZP és Lendvai Ildikó az SZDSZ székháza előtt fog majd tüntetni. Kövér a tatárszentgyörgyi gyilkosságról kifejtette, hogy nem tekinthetők emberi lényeknek azok, akik előre eltervezetten hátba lőnek egy 5 éves gyereket, de azok sem, akik hátulról leszúrnak egy sportolót.

"A rendőrség vezetését az elmúlt években maga alá gyűrte egy politikai bűnöző banda, aminek eredménye a most kialakult helyzet" - tette hozzá. Kövér szerint az emberek közbiztonságérzetét nem lehet statisztikákkal kifejezni, mivel mindenki a saját élethelyzetéből indul ki. "A rendőrséget szisztematikusan juttatták oda, hogy nem képes a közbizalmat maga mellé állítani" - hangsúlyozta Kövér. Meg lehet változtatni a jogszabályokat, amire volt példa a Orbán-kormány idején is, azonban szemléletváltozás nélkül nehéz eredményeket elérni - mondta Kövér. A politikus az egész országot eluraló liberális közszellemet tette felelőssé azért, hogy mostanra idáig jutott a közmorál.

A kormány által indított politikai roadshow kapcsán Kövér kifejtette: örömteli tény, hogy nem fogadta ujjongó tömeg a miniszterelnököt. Ennek oka - mondta Kövér -, hogy a szocialista szavazókat is ugyanazok a problémák gyötrik, mint a polgári oldalon lévőket. Kövér szerint a hazánkban kialakult válság jelentős okozója az a közgazdász elit, amely hagyta, hogy Gyurcsány-kormány 2006-ig folytassa a felelőtlen költekezés politikáját. "Ennek az elitnek az egyik képviselője Bokros Lajos is, akit az MDF most éppen EP-listavezetőjének jelölt" - zárta a Fidesz választmányi elnöke.
(hirtv.hu)

[Tünde]

„Meanwhile, the majority of Hungarians think that with a larger and more effective force "crimes against the Roma" can be eliminated. I very much doubt it.”

No, I think that the majority of Hungarians understand that it is not only a matter of a more effective force, although it is obvious that would help (particularly decentralisation and more on the ground in the countryside as you noted). You mentioned yourself earlier the poll on gypsy „prejudice” in Hungary (http://www.publicus.hu/blog/ciganyellenesseg). In it over 80% of Hungarians believe that the gypsy „question” would be solved if 1. they learn to “behave more like Hungarians” and 2. they „finally start to work”. (The questions were phrased by the pollsters.) The third question was: how much was gypsy poverty involved in society's prejudices towards them, only 46% thought so. And also there was a question re: anti-gypsy sentiment (79 to 85%), which also demonstrated the (small) difference between „left” and „right” wing political preference. While I think that the pollsters' questions were unfair and simplistic, it does show that Hungarians do think there is a major problem of unemployment and lack of assimilation. And, significantly, there was no difference in political party preference amongst the respondents.

In addition, by saying “crime against the Roma” (instead of crime involving Roma) you imply at issue is crime against the Roma by non Roma, i.e. Hungarians and this is just not so. Not only are Hungarians victims of crime by Roma, but the crime within the Roma community of Roma against Roma is also rising, along with crime within the majority society, and yes, there do seem to have physical attacks and rock throwing against the Roma by Hungarians, although the molotov cocktail attacks and shootings have not been solved, so I do not see how the Népszabadság came up with these as “crimes against the gypsies” you mentioned earlier (by, presumably, non gypsies). But if that is the case, why is it acceptable to list and classify attacks on the gypsies as racially motivated, or hate crimes, but not attacks on Hungarians by gypsies? Mohácsi Viktória herself said crime is crime, but it seems that is the case only when non-Roma are victims. During the extremely brutal lynching at Olaszliszka the attackers shouted „kill the Hungarian” yet all political parties will be represented at the Tatárszentgyörgy victims' funeral, while none were at the one who died in Olaszliszka. This is just as polarising as the extreme right wing's actions.

Worth mentioning is Obmudsman (and Roma) Kállai Gábor's interview in the Népszava last week: „It is possible that the murders of the past few months were not ethnically motivated, but became so because we don't know why gypsies were the victims, or the reason behind the specific type of incident.” he said ("Lehet, hogy az utóbbi hónapokban történt gyilkosságok nem is etnikai színezetűek, és csak attól váltak azzá, hogy nem tudjuk, miért pont a cigányokat bántották, és miért pont így.”) 2009.02.27. http://www.nepszava.hu/default.asp?cCenter=OnlineCikk.asp&ArticleID=1161956. He states twice doubts that there is ethnically motivated violent crime directed against the gypsies, that racial typing is not necessarily a negative thing (a Roma police officer said the same last year in a forum on MTV), that the countryside has been abandoned by the state and all the resources are going to centralised schools, and that we should question the current policy of total assimilation. Kállai in other ways supports current policy, such as social aid without the requirement of community work, and last year he said that the state should subsidised relocation housing for Romas who find work any from their village.

[Odin's lost eye]

The problem is the wide range of duties the police are expected to undertake and the wide range of specialities required to do them. Young ’wooden tops’ as the uniformed branch were called take about 1 ½ years of pounding the beat to gain the practical knowledge and to ‘gain the nose’ as it is sometimes called needed to deal with the public. This is called ‘baby sitting’
A big part of the problem is the large numbers of experienced policemen who spend their days as ‘pen pushers’ filling in the huge amounts of forms required to compile the statistics instead of ‘baby sitting’ the less expert and novices. You cannot gain ‘the nose’ in a class room! It takes practice and on the job training to develop the special senses or feelings to know when someone ‘is trying to take you for a ride’.
The Roma live in almost ghettos where they isolate them selves feeding upon the general ethos of their peers and developing a sort of mutual support network. They are battened upon by the criminals in their midst which they cannot rid themselves of because of their distrust of the police and other authorities who they regard as coming from another ethos or world. For a Roma to give up another Roma to the police, may, in the eyes of a Roma, be an unforgivable sin. It may be this that gives the detectives investigating the case(s) such difficulty in clearing them up.
It is only when the majority of the Roma merge with the rest of the population, that is, become unnoticeable, that they will become ‘just another victim of crime’ as opposed to a group invented by headline grabbing journalists and used to increase the circulation of the papers.
This isolation incidentally fuels the far right’s contention that the Roma are some sort of sub-human species to be eliminated by another ‘Final Solution’. We have had enough of that thank you!
Mr Kállai ideas in some ways are wrong. For any ethnically different group to be given preferential treatment to the bulk of the population singles them out and paints targets on their backs

[Nathaniel]

This post gives so much information about how to become a police officer. There are several criteria the police department wants when they are recruiting people as a police officers. They require people to be fit, strong and more enthusiastic. As the technology advances that officers should be able to learn the new things on their ways.
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http://www.police-recruitment.co.uk

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