TIRANA, July 18 – Advisors of the United States International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) at the police academy hailed the recent move of creating new patrolling police squads.
Over the last two years a joint effort of the Albanian government and international advisors from organizations such as the ICITAP and the Police Assistance Mission of the European Community to Albania (PAMECA) has resulted in a number of reforms for the Albanian State Police. One of the most significant reforms undertaken is the change in the way police services will be delivered in the field.
Earlier this year one hundred forty-one (141) police trainees graduated from a newly designed training program which stressed all aspects of police work allowing the newly trained officers to serve in many capacities. This new “generalist” way of policing was stressed in the Field Training phase of the program which the newly graduated officers began on the 5th of February 2007.
The Field Training phase was a twenty (20) week, mentor-training program, introducing each new police trainee to a variety of police service tasks within the framework of the Albanian State Police (ASP). These twenty weeks consisted of three (3) training phases: 1-Orientation, 2-Assimilation and 3-Final Task Evaluation. The first two phases occurred in the initial ten weeks and introduced the recruit to the new working environment and familiarized him/her with the many core tasks that will be performed in service to their community. The final ten-week evaluation phase saw an intensified curriculum of mentoring, improvement and final completion of the necessary core tasks which a police ‘generalist’ must master. On 13 July 2007, 133 of the new officers assumed their generalist duties within the Tirana Directorate and selected Commissariats.
The long-range plan is for the “generalist” to become the backbone of service delivery for the ASP. They will constitute a pool of officers capable of performing a full array of services to the citizens of Albania, consistent with the tennets of community-based policing and international professional standards. They will, for example, be able to enforce traffic laws, conduct initial investigations, respond to all types of calls for service and will be the first to respond to the needs of the community. This will be an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process that will be incrementally built over a period of time. As the generalists increase in number, they will gradually replace the need for the officer specialization model currently used by the ASP.
The generalist will eventually be larger in numbers than specialists in the current structure, such as public order, traffic, facilities, and investigation functions. While certain specialist sections and officers must be retained, all new and current Basic Level officers, which make up the majority of field service officers, will be trained as “Generalist” and assigned as needed to duties which may include duty in the remaining selected “specialist” functions. The generalist will become the primary model and concept expected of the police service.
