There is the political will to enforce the law in Crete and everywhere and this is happening.
The Minister of Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrysochoidis, spoke about new and old forms of violence, as well as the policies and actions that have been developed to address them, with journalist Tasos Telloglou, in the context of the annual Conference organized by the Circle of Ideas in collaboration with the Delphi Economic Forum.
The Minister referred in detail to the Crime phenomena in Crete pointing out that the island has a low crime rate, however the problem is concentrated in "15 families who were left, under a regime of peculiar tolerance, to arbitrarily, extort, deceive and operate as criminal groups, with the vendettas being a manifestation of this struggle and not a tradition."
He noted, however, that there is now a very strong will of the local community, which is manifested by thousands of phone calls and messages from citizens urging the police, while he added that there is also the political will to enforce the law and this is happening. He reiterated that all of this will be addressed with the establishment of the Sub-Directorate for Combating Organized Crime of Crete, which is staffed with approximately 150 police officers and will also have a special department that will deal exclusively with specific criminal activities, while those who are arrested and remanded in custody will be taken to prisons outside Crete.
About the mutation of violence, noted that the political violence of the Post-Political Era has subsided, but has been replaced, as he said, by a "diffuse violence that multiplies every day the image that shows violence, through social networks and this spreads to children, to minors, to schools. It is no coincidence that we have so much violence in schools", he noted. At this point, he specifically referred to the issue of domestic violence, pointing out that every year in the last two and a half years, 25.000 complaints of domestic violence are recorded and 13.000 arrests are made, while today 650 abusers are in prison, mainly under trial. "They are repeat offenders because they are abusive by nature, they are repeat offenders because they are substance users, they are alcohol users, phenomena that are not addressed by the structures of our society, the psychiatric, the social, the municipalities," he said, adding that thousands of women now also have the Panic Button application.
Regarding organized crime and the Greek Mafia, The Minister of Citizen Protection stated that since the moment the Organized Crime Directorate began operating, that is, since October 2024, it has dismantled approximately 200 criminal organizations and currently there is no unsolved case of organized crime murder, while in the last 15 years, until 2023, we had 24 murders attributed to settling scores, without a single investigation.
On the use of police force and the management of assemblies He pointed out that "gatherings should not be broken up with chemicals, as this is not a democratic example", while efforts are being made "with the special group O.D.O.S. to delimit gatherings and at the same time to have as much tolerance as possible, so that a gathering can be completed and not lead to its dissolution because some provocateurs are actually attempting to break it up". At the same time, he noted that after the permission given by the Personal Data Protection Authority, the installation of body cameras on police officers, patrol cars and company motorcycles is progressing "so that there is transparency and when problems arise, we keep in mind who is responsible. We are constantly making an effort for police officers to carry out their duties, always within the framework of protecting human rights", he concluded.
