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The Minister of Internal Affairs, Lucian Bode, declared on Thursday that he requested reports which refer to the number of fines, but also the applied warnings, because he wanted to know how police officers focus on prevention measures, in the context of the pandemic, according to AGERPRES.
The statements were made within the reunited budget-finance committees in Parliament, where Bode was asked why police officers need to report these numbers daily and if there is a "fines plan".
"There is a false problem which you highlighted here - as a source, Europol. I said it since the beginning: Our purpose is not that of sanctioning citizens, our purpose is that of preventing the spread of coronavirus and, through what we requested two weeks ago, we actually requested to see how much of our structures' actions represent prevention. I am focusing a lot on prevention and I wanted to see. When there is 20% prevention and 80% fines it is not right. When I will see that 60% is prevention and 40% fines, then we can talk. This is the reason why I requested that reporting, which they were doing anyway. Only now there's an extra column: How much those represent prevention from their activities", Bode said.
The statements were made after the Europol Trade Union made public an internal order sent to all police inspectorates throughout the country, according to which there needs to be a daily reporting of the number of police officers engaged in organized actions, the number of applied contravention fines and the number of the applied warnings.
"We came across a document issued by the Romanian Police that starts a "fines hunt". Police officers are being imposed to daily report, until 23:00, the number of applied fines, broken down, fines / warnings. It is for the first time when MAI (Ministry of Internal Affairs) has shown such a vested interest in fines applied by police officers. It is also for the first time time when it is unconsciously induced to police officers, that the number of applied fines is a "performance indicator". We firmly condemn these types of intimidation actions at the expense of police officers, the purpose of which is to force them to fine the population," the union wrote, on its Facebook page.
