In 2013, when he had just come to power, Prime Minister Edi Rama started his campaign “to clean to incriminated police.” The Prime Minister’s plan was to “dissolve the State Police and to create the National Investigation and Crime Bureau.”
In June 2013, Prime Minister Rama declared:
We will build the National Crime Bureau. It is an institution repeatedly requested by all specialized international assistance for Albania, to unify within a single structure a number of issues that currently are uncoordinated.
[In 2013] the employment of people in the police is done with money. The higher the rank, the higher the sum of money. All these current structures are scattered and uncoordinated. We will bring standards, we will bring Europe.
We will employ people through transparent criteria, we will compensate them according to a scheme proposed by international expertise.
But this plan was never implemented. With the arrival of Saimir Tahiri at the Ministry of Interior, the State Police became the “Police We Love.” This became one of the most controversial media campaign of Rama, also because during this period the police organized fairs and other unnecessary spectacles, while in the country the cultivation of cannabis took off.
During a speech before State Police official, Prime Minister Rama stated:
Never forget, whenever you feel unjustly accused, a famous expression of Kant: “When someone accuses you for something you haven’t done, he has either done it himself, or is ready to do it himself.” Such is also the accusation about drug money and criminal money; they either took it themselves, or are ready to do so.
Every day they attack the State Police. Every day they organize conferences, speeches, attacks against the State Police.
If at the end of the day, today with you I had the honor of making a “photo of the day” with you, I would be the happiest man today in this country.
During his first four years in power, Prime Minister Rama has always spoken in superlatives about the work of the State Police and then Minister Tahiri.
That is, until yesterday, when the Prime Minister presented a Special Task Force that will include US FBI agents to fight organized crime, which has caused so much controversy with international institutions:
[Monday] the government will gather to establish a Special Task Force of the State Police for a long-term and intensive operation against organized crime. A part of this structure “The Force of Law” will be secret and not be shared with anyone only national and international agencies. The inclusion of FBI agents also fills me with optimism. Also other FBI agents will join us against organized crime and financial crime, who will give their experience in Albania. We will fight with organized crime and financial crime.
Up to today, when tons of cannabis from Albania are captured every day on the Italian shores by the Guardia di Finanza, but not on the Albanian ones, despite all the structures that have been created, the police under the government of Edi Rama has utterly failed in the fight against cannabis and organized crime.
