Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama in ceremony for the new applications in the State Police:

Hello everyone!

All the best to the girls and boys who are here today for the first competition after the entry into force of the new law on police, which radically reformed the security sector and provided the basis for any police officer to guarantee the dignity to the corps and the uniform.

You are committed to take this important step in life, in a very important moment for the State Police and for our country.

This first step of yours in trying to achieve the ambition to become part of the State Police corps coincides with a stage of reforms and radical transformation. It coincides with a phase where thanks to the leadership of the Minister of Interior, thanks to the dedication and professionalism of the management team of the State Police, our police is ranked today first in the list of institutions in terms of trust. It is ranked first in our surveys, and it is ranked first in the surveys of international institutions.

Undoubtedly, it is a fortune that the ambition of each of you complies with our ambition. We are very lucky, each and every one of you who will win the competition are very lucky to join the State Police at a moment when the attention to the Police State, the way it is treated and respected are at the highest level.

Compared with the first competition where there were 10 applicants for a vacancy, this year the number has increased and there are 17 applicants. We want to believe that, inter alia, this significant increase in the number of girls and boys who want to work in the ASP is related to the fact that the State Police is becoming increasingly an institution that people value, trust and, why not, love.

On the other hand, I want to wish all the best especially to the girls who are here in this room. In the light of this radical reform, an increased number of girls and women contributing to the State Police is a key aspect. And actually, 50% girls were selected in the first competition. A minimum of 30% girls and women will be accepted this year, in addition to the 6 quota envisaged for minority representatives.

What is more important is that thanks to the experience of this academy that we re-launched on new bases, we are increasing step by step the average education level of employees of the State Police. The State Police we inherited two and a half years ago had the lowest level of education in the region and in Europe. It was the most uneducated police in our continent; the most uneducated police in our region. In addition, it was the oldest police in terms of age in Europe and in the region. And thirdly, the most abused police both financially and politically.

Today, the number of police officers with higher education has increased to 33% compared with 20% it was in 2013, but there is no doubt that this figure does not meet our objective.

Our objective has been declared and is totally achievable. We want the State Police to have the standards, the integrity and professionalism as any police force of the European Union. We will make the Albanian State Police look like every EU police force.

Our intention is to have an excellent and outstanding State Police in the region. We will transform our State Police in an excellent and outstanding corps in the region, which is the average of the European Union police corps.

A great job has been done in the State Police to provide training on a regular basis and to have periodical tests. Professional and physical tests that were missing for many years. You are young, but I am convinced that since you have made this step, you must know something about the recent history of the State Police, and the fact that it was not long ago when the state police was the uniform of the degradation of our state. An abandoned, betrayed and destroyed uniform. A uniform ruined by politics, plagued by corruption and poverty. Poor in tools, technology and finances. Police officers were uneducated and treated without respect. And today is not that we have done any miracle, but we are in the conditions when we can say that we have a Police State that is treated with respect, is treated well form a financial point of view, and is obviously treated with the maximum attention, since it has the conditions to be trained, to grow professionally and to be physically fit.

According to Transparency International, in 2013 the Albanian police was one of the three most corrupt and untrustworthy institutions of our country. Albania was ranked in the blacklist of the State Department for human trafficking.

Today, the picture is different. The state police has entered the path of the digital revolution. Not only this, but it has become an example for making use of the advantages of technology, and for its modernization through technology.

For the first time in Europe, and we say this proudly, because there is a number of partner police forces, as leaders of the State Police can testify, who wanted to adopt and are adopting our experience. So, for the first time in Europe the police of a state has built its own digital police station. The success of the digital police station does not consist merely in the application and in the opportunity provided by technology, but also in the fact the police looked as a challenge and won the challenge of the speed of communication guaranteed by technology in order to be connected with citizens.

So, if there have been 40 thousand downloads in the digital station in the first 10 months, this doesn’t make the digital station a successful experience, because it could have been also the mirror to see failure in the event that the State Police didn’t respond to these 40 thousand applications, complaints or alarm bells of the citizens. What makes the digital station a success story is the fact that every citizen can have access to the Police Station through their phones.

The number of police officers was another element of the extreme weakness that we showed, since the police force we inherited was the lowest in number per capita in the region and in Europe. It increased by 1.100 people, and in addition to increasing, it influenced the reduction of the average age, which was 44, the highest average in the region and Europe. We must continue reducing it, and in this aspect the fact that there are so many girls and boys applying to become part of the police corps is great news for the State Police.

On the other hand, the State Police changed its image, changed its voice and changed the approach in the contact with citizens, through the one-stop-shop where civilian employees have been recruited, and who are there not simply to record the complaints of citizens, but to serve as advocates for people with efficiency and above all with transparency in order to prevent any possibility of the old corrupt practices form emerging in the first contact of citizens who need the State Police.

The number of police forces on the ground increased by 15%, and from a corrupt police forces concentrated in the offices in Tirana, it was transformed in a police forces close to citizens in every community. The creation of community policing sections has already begun.

If in the 8 years of the previous governance the salaries of the police were 2 times lower, and the police forces did not receive any remuneration for overtime for more than 2 years, since January 2014 the salaries of employees of the State Police have increased 25% on average. If we start counting from the lowest rate, they doubled in the lowest rate, and then progressively achieved an average towards the highest rate. The State Police budget allocated for 2015 has been the highest ever.

The Special Forces would engage into actions against dangerous criminals without any security for their lives. While today they are insured, and every police officer is guaranteed the opportunity to get a soft loan for housing, access to rewards and a supplementary pension.

The Minister spoke about the incorporated cameras, which are another important step in the digital revolution that will completely modernize the State Police. We want the incorporated cameras to be applied across the territory as soon as possible. On the other hand, we are confident that this year the road safety cameras will be applied throughout the territory, which will create optimal conditions to track violations and offenders in real time, in order to increase exponentially the detection of any offense, from the smallest to the most severe.

The fight against corruption in the State Police has not been and is not a fight against an evil that is outside the fence or yard of this corps, but it has been and remains a struggle outside the yard as much as it is inside the yard. 11% of the corps of the State Police has been penalized in two years, for the smallest to the most serious violations, such as abuse of office or disregard of the ethics of the State Police.

What is the most important and constitutes the priority of this new path is the separation of the state police from crime. “Crime when it succeeds becomes a virtue” – the great Roman philosopher Seneca said.

This is the truth of the past years of the State Police, where many experienced employees, mostly men with virtues and exceptional skills felt paralyzed and betrayed because the crime had turned into a virtue, and the connection of crime with the State Police became a bond that dictated for years the decision making, and affected directly its destruction.

Practically, crime became a virtuous model to grow rich, to corrupt and of course to become invulnerable thanks to the corrupt ability to influence, and certainly to become unpunished thanks to the influential capacity.

I am convinced that you keep track of the daily life and are informed that one of the most attacked persons of our government, but I believe in the political environment, after me – for of course I was born to be attacked – is the Minister of Interior, against whom an ongoing organized offensive on a daily basis has produced over 1300 statements, conferences, references, aggressive and criminal attitudes in 2 and a half years.

If anyone among you read and listened this without filters, they would not be here today; they would stay kilometres away from this hall where the highest representative of the government, the leader of this major transformation of the State Police is allegedly the exponent number one of organized crime in Albania. This happens for the same reason for which in your life and career in the State Police you will feel attacked any time you attack. It is for the same reason that executives of the State Police feel attacked today, for they have attacked, and crime does not only hit with the brutality of force, but also with the brutal force of language. The industry of besmirching is the industry of crime. There are too many reasons today for crime to set in motion, even to intensify, the production of mud to hit the Minister of Interior, by hitting the heads of the State Police while pretending to feel sorry for the State Police.

I will give just one example: Lazarat.

Lazarat has been there for years. An oasis where crime had established its full sovereignty, and where nobody would think to see that oasis disappear while they were alive. But Lazarat was much more than that magic grass and the local gangsters with guns that resisted the State Police for 5-6 days. Lazarat was a bank of black money where billions would circulate, and the burning down of the plantation of the “magic medicine” and the arresting of local gangsters was only the visible part.

Those flames burned down a bank whose money does not circulate any more. Those who used to benefit from these billions have lost billions, but they have not lost their power to fight with the masks of politics, of the media, and with the voice that crime takes from politics and other segments to speak in its besmirched name.

Well, this is the greatest significance of the success of the work for reforming the State Police. There is no real reform if there is no besmirching fury to oppose reform and people who do the reform. Everywhere, in every country, from the most democratic countries to the least developed ones, the only difference is the amount of mud, and mud is the most efficient way to mislead the public opinion. Instead of fighting the reform with arguments, they fight with mud against the people who do the reform.

Dear applicants!

Let me tell you that without the reform of the State Police and without the results obtained by the State Police, Albania would not have had the status of candidate country, a first sign of the trust created in Brussels that we can build a state.

Of course, this confidence was strengthened since the first steps by the unique work done by the Ministry of Interior and the State Police. Therefore, this must surely be a beautiful day in your life, in the lives of all who will win the competition, while to those who won’t win the competition I would say to not give up. And if their aspiration is as strong as the power of every dream that makes someone keep going to achieve their objective, to try it again, to be prepared for this experience and to try it again, try it again, because the State Police needs boys and girls like you, it needs people who have the passion, it needs people who bring more young people, more power, and certainly more of the aspiration of this generation that you represent.

I am confident that together we will definitely achieve our goal to make the State Police an example in the region where we live, and unquestionably make it one of the best police forces of the European Union.

Many thanks and all the best!

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Prime Minister Edi Rama attended today the first day of competition of those applying to continue their studies in the Police School for General Patrol. 5012 applicants, young men and women aged 24 years, met the criteria to continue with the next stages of the competition. After the written test of the first stage, competitors will be subject to other stages of testing for physical and psychological skills. 300 winning candidates, of which 90 women, will be selected at the end of the process.