2023-11-16 05:45:00
The return to level 3 of the threat assessed by Ocam is not without impact on the daily management of local police zones. Internally, maintaining this level for a month makes people cringe. This level has been in force across the country since the October 16 attack and the conflict in the Middle East. It involves reinforced surveillance of places considered sensitive, starting with places of Jewish interest.
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The cost that the deployment of level 3 represents for the taxpayer is difficult to assess as the measures are scattered and confidential. But on the side of the CGSP union and the field police officers, we believe that this measure contributes to further weakening the local areas which can no longer carry out all of their basic missions.
“We are transferring missions because the federal police are already exhausted”
“The federal government is taking measures without providing additional resources to local areas. More police officers are assigned to securing sensitive places but this reserve of police officers is drawn from positions such as neighborhood officers or traffic officers,” estimates Eddy Quaino, permanent CGSP. “We are therefore carrying out transfers of missions because the federal police are already exhausted. Normally, it is for example local police officers who must intervene in places like train stations instead of the police. railways and now they must also implement level 3.”
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The situation is particularly critical since the announcement by Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden last week of a strengthening of surveillance around Jewish places of interest without increasing the level to 4 for these specific places. . “Therefore, the police sometimes have to patrol four or five times an hour in front of the same place,” criticizes Eddy Quaino. Raising the level would in fact have made it possible to draw on the reserves of the federal police, but it is up to the local areas to assume this role.
Judicial investigations impacted
Concretely, level 3 may in particular cause delays in the conduct of legal investigations. “To have a real basic police force, you need police officers in the neighborhoods. However, as we cannot draw on intervention services, we call on neighborhood officers who nevertheless constitute the first point of contact during judicial investigations. But today, almost all of the neighborhood officers are no longer on duty, which can result in more slowness in the search for information during judicial investigations,” adds Eddy Quaino.
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Several reasons explain the decision to maintain level 3 of Ocam one month after the attack. On the one hand, the investigation into the attack in which two Swedish nationals were killed is still ongoing. On the other hand, tensions following the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East are only increasing. “Extremism does not stop at national borders and incidents have already occurred in several neighboring countries. Actions resulting from mimicry, that is to say an act of violence which inspires another act of violence, are not excluded,” explains Ocam.
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Proof of this is that anti-Semitic acts have never been so numerous since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7 and the response that followed. “We are seeing a significant increase in the number of reports. For comparison, last year, we recorded four to five reports of anti-Semitism per month, while currently, this figure is around thirty reports,” explained Patrick Charlier, director of Unia, in our columns at the beginning of November.
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