Transportation Police reveals dirty affairs

The Police Department of Transportation has completed for this year, a more complex activity plan designated especially for the fighting the crimes and deficiencies in insuring a good watch of goods and values. All these actions are focused in the areas where criminal acts are expending. Commander Mircea Bot, Director of the Transportation Police Department explained to us the approved strategies that are going to be applied in order to foresee and reduce the number of antisocial acts.
Ï would like to say first that I do not have the intention of dismissing people form their positions. On the contrary, I intend to implement a very organized and efficient activity system, necessary for changing the image of the Transportation Police Department.
After a thorough research, I think it necessary for making some redistribution of teams, realized of course in accordance with the operational situations that are going to occur. Although I have been appointed in this position for a short period of time, I use to hear very frequently the line: “We are few in number and we cannot cover all the area”. It is also known the fact that we have eight Inspectorate TF Police Devisions in the territory, which develop their activity in collaboration with the fifth divisions of the Department - judicial, economical-financial, naval transportation, public order and patrols in freight and public trains - as well as with the Crime departments, crime service and operational evidence service.
After the analysing of the process we noticed certain inefficiency related to a few of the TF inspectorate police divisions. There were cases when within a certain area we were confronted with a very complex operative situation, which necessitated a greater number of personnel, whereas, other inspectorates were not so caught up with business. Should we made a comparison, as for example the activity of the Police divisions from Brasov and Constanta, we will notice that they have the same number of personnel, but the specific of their activity differs from one to another: while in Constanta we are monitoring four types of transportation (railway, naval, road and aerial), in Brasov we have under our supervision just two transportation modalities: railway and aerial. So, we have a more complex situation in Constanta. But this is not the only situation. That is why I have decided to choose as solution that of personnel redistribution. It is not fare for some people to work overtime, whereas “patrolling too much” bores the others. The complexity of a certain case would obviously lead to necessity of involving much more people, from the other divisions. As example I would remind you of the action in Pascani, where somebody reported us that there were missing a few millions lei from the administration house. Since that division didn’t have enough personnel, we had to send on the spot, people within the Transportation Police Department and the Criminal Department, who executed the file. What is curious about it, is that fact that, despite the fact that this case had been known even since 1998, nobody did anything in order to stop it. Which made me find those who pretended not to have seen a thing and make them pay. No matter where I used to work I was not the kind of person who like playing with halves of measures, and I have never accepted the lies and the misinformation.
As regarding the economical aspect, we have performed some researches related to some dubious privatisation, auctions, agreements, which generated a great loss both for the budget of state and of the Transportation Ministry. Without giving data and names, I could give you few examples. One ghost-company within the North area of the country, having just 36 employees, succeeds in wining the bid for repairing works with respect to wagons within the activity area of many CFR regional departments. The so-called repairing works proved to be just a mere painting of the wagons, which cost a few hundreds of millions lei! Another example would be that of a company that receives an order for executing 30 cabins for the switching men. How much was the price for such a cabin, if you could imagine? Not more or less than 11 millions apiece (without any VAT included). And this happened in 19997! So for such a big amount of money to order 30 cabins at that price, seemed to me that something was wrong. And of course, the list with examples could go on.
It is not going to be easy to clarify all the cases, but, with the support of the specialised authorities, I am convinced that we will succeed in making the guilty ones liable for every little crime they committed.
We also ordered a re-evaluation of the patrolling itineraries, and the personnel has now much more responsibilities then it used to have before.
In order to fight the thefts from the Railway, we have created (temporary) watching posts within each railway station that is enlisted among the criminals’ preferences.
It will take a while until we are able to finally establish the new functioning system of the Transportation Police Department. What is really important is the fact that it has already been started, and that all the activities we have performed so far make us be very confident in our success.
Although I am not so much connected with the railway transportation, I do think that working in a Police department -generally speaking- is the same no matter the activity sector. The only difference is the fact that, in certain activity fields, there are a few particularities, which we all eventually will learn, in the end.
To conclude, I could say that the first steps toward the changing in attitude have already been taken. The fact that many files that should have been resolved in the past are now solved out, shows the fact that we know what we want to do. It is important not to let time pass by us and to remain in this stage until summer time, because I also have other projects which I would like to make them true-such as the foundation of a new division: The Motorway Police.

Ana Stanciu reporting