Independent Police Union: Protests if the position of police officers is not improved

A country that is not capable of training, equipping and equipping its police should think deeply about which way it is going, said the president of the Independent Police Union, Igor Rmandić.

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Photo: Independent Police Union
Photo: Independent Police Union
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

The Independent Police Union appealed, on the occasion of Internal Affairs Day, which is celebrated today, to urgently improve the position of police officers or, as they said, they will organize protests.

"Instead of being in a good mood and a festive atmosphere, police officers welcome another holiday disappointed, disenfranchised and on the brink of existence. A police officer with 25 years of service and a salary of 540 euros can only dream of a normal life and a secure existence for his family. What to do shall we say for the younger ones who have even less and have yet to form their families?

"Today we will hear empty, insincere and polite congratulations on the occasion of the Day of Internal Affairs, many will be *delighted* by our courage and sacrifice, and already tomorrow things will go back to the way they were before. Those same minders and *pats on the back* will forget us, our families will not be important, and our lives will be just numbers again," said the statement of the president of the Independent Police Union, Igor Rmandić.

As he said, the politicians' "mouths are full of worn-out phrases" such as that the policeman is the state and that an attack on a policeman is an attack on the state, so he asked what they had done in previous years to protect that state.

"They canceled her hot meal, vacation pay, transportation, winter leave, jubilee awards, operational and border allowance. The policeman is forced to ask the court for even the *dry* salary he earned honestly because they want to take that away from him. The policeman works even when are all during the holidays with their families, and then he has to pay for those holiday hours with the help of the court because someone decided to save on his pain. And the worst part is, when the court finds that the policeman was harmed during the calculation of earnings, no one is responsible for that. And court costs are huge and the state loses millions in that way. And then they tell us that there is no money to increase salaries. There is money, gentlemen, it really is, but it needs to be allocated and spent by households," says Rmandić.

He said that a country that "is not capable of training, equipping and equipping its own police force" should think deeply about the path it is taking.

"What kind of message do they send to an ordinary citizen who wants, expects and needs to be protected and peaceful? A policeman who goes to work hungry, in a uniform he bought at a market and shoes bought on installments must have a superhuman will, a great love for his service and an extremely high sense of responsibility to carry out his tasks professionally and at the highest level.

"All this will pay off in the coming years because the young generations are demotivated by this kind of attitude towards the police, and it is unlikely that under these conditions many of them will decide to wear a uniform in the future. Unfortunately, those who make decisions in this country are not aware of this today. they don't think or have a vision of the development of the service for the next 5, 10, 15 years. The *experts* who paraded through the service in the past decades have collapsed and degraded it beyond recognition. The difficulty and dangers of this job have become inversely proportional to the respect and trust citizens have towards the police which is the best indicator that things need to change urgently," said Rmandić.

He said that the Independent Police Union and the police officers he represents "will not beg and will not beg", but that they have every right to demand from all competent state institutions that the position of police officers be urgently improved.

"Not with small and negligible moves, but with serious and planned improvement that will be proportional to the weight of the work we do and its importance for the entire society. Otherwise, we will be forced to use all the opportunities that the Constitution and the laws of this country give us in order to protect our own right to a normal and decent life states allow. One of those possibilities, and we are very close to it, is to demand our rights where all the disenfranchised and humiliated demand them, where decisions are made, the living environment is created and the fate of the citizens of Montenegro is decided. With protests in front of the Government, Assembly and ministries.

"Each glass has its own capacity, after which it begins to overflow. The glass in which the patience of police officers is found has long since been full. There is no room in it for even one more drop," concluded Rmandić.

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