Seven out of ten policemen, who are working in the Greek police probably shouldn’t be able to carry guns, say their colleagues, as well as union members. On one hand they are not trained as the law says and on the other no one knows their psychological condition because the required psychometric tests were never done due to the lack of police psychologists. Right now for 50 000 policemen in the whole country there are only five psychologists. But they cannot do their job as well because commissions were never done to see whether the policemen’s psychological condition is OK in order to carry a gun.

If everything was functioning as the law intended, the 16 year old student could have been alive. The policeman who shot the boy should been to two psychiatric appointments until now. If he were, then the results could have been different. There are attempts to hire 55 psychologists, who should make up the commissions, which are supposed to be working since 2003. The situation becomes even harder if you keep in mind that the policemen are not even trained, they have a short shooting training, they buy their weapons by themselves and they are not controlled at all. The worst part is that according to the presidential enactment their training is lowered from 2 years to 120 days in order for the missing numbers to be filled up faster.

At the same time, the law for use of weapon, which was voted for during 2003 is left in the drawer. Among everything else the law says that the policemen need to pass successfully few psychological tests in order to graduate from the academy and that shooting training is to be done regularly. Some of those regulations were not applied.

Yesterday the policemen who shot the 16 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos attacked his accomplice in the prison cell where they are being kept until the start of the case. He threatened his colleague and said he was possessed by demons. When the guards managed to calm him down, they separated them into different cells.