Shift in priorities in Polish Police Force

The Polish National Police Headquarters has shifted its focus from criminal offenses to economic crime in a bid to catch up with the changing reality of crime in modern Poland, the Polish daily reported in July 2014.

”The decreased dynamic in criminal offenses is welcomed, and the increased number of revealed instances of economic crime is the result of our intensified actions and the increased number of police officers delegated to fight that kind of offenses,” Commander in Chief Marek Dzialoszynski told Polish daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna in an interview.

“These crimes are not on the surface, they need to be uncovered. Therefore, the more people are deployed to search for them, the more [such cases] will be found.”

As much as four percent of all the resources that the Polish police has at its disposal is delegated to fight white-collar crime, Dzialoszynski said. Police are also reportedly actively looking for partners in the private sector, such as online portals, and institutions from the insurance and banking sectors.

Dzialoszynski admitted that the criminal reality has changed, and that criminals have moved to the Internet and to the economic sector. “This change,” the commander said “has also forced us to re-orientate, and to [introduce] changes in how we train our policemen.”