The shortage of police officers in the Polish capital of Warsaw has reached a crisis point, a leading figure in the capital’s police force has claimed.
Speaking to an RMF FM journalist over the weekend, Metropolitan Police Commander Inspector Dariusz Walichnowski warned that resources were stretched so much that officers could not perform all expected tasks and Polish citizens were suffering as a result.
“We are operating in emergency mode,” said Walichnowski.
He explained that the response time of emergency workers had more than doubled in recent years, estimating that the workforce was missing around a quarter of the personnel required to operate effectively.
Warsaw is currently missing about 2,500 officers per 10,000 needed, he told the broadcaster.
“In numbers, it looks like this: We used to take about 10, 15, 20 minutes to reach the scene of an intervention or a road accident. Today, the wait time is much longer, up to 40 minutes,” Walichnowski added.
In April, Remix News reported how the Main Commandant’s Office of the Polish Police was studying the possibility of allowing foreign nationals to be included in the recruitment process for the police force to combat the rising number of vacancies.
Additionally, the office explained that a rise in foreign nationals living in Poland, brought on in part by the war in neighboring Ukraine, called for the police force to be more diverse.
“The aim is to help identify, among other things, the cultural conditions of these migrants staying in our country,” read a press release from the authorities.
“We are talking about employment for full-time positions in the police, but also for contracts, for example, for consultants,” it added.
The left-liberal coalition government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk set itself a target to employ over 10,000 officers in 2024, with university graduates accounting for 60 percent of new recruits. However, in the capital, at least, the current number of reinforcements remains insufficient.
