Report slams Belgian police chief

4 January 2005

BRUSSELS – Belgium’s most senior law enforcement officer has failed in his role to develop a co-ordinated national police service, according to a highly critical internal report.

The evaluation report, extracts of which appeared in Tuesday’s edition of De Standaard newspaper, said that Commissioner General Herman Fransen, had not managed to impose his will on the country’s different police services.

Local police were not properly integrated with the federal force, the study said, adding that Fransen behaved more like a co-ordinator than a chief police officer.

The study did not call for Fransen to step down however, arguing that he had the intellectual capacities and the experience to do the job required of him.

Belgium’s police services underwent a major overhaul after the Marc Dutroux child murder case in the mid 1990s showed up appalling levels of police bungling.

Views are mixed over whether the reforms have been a success however, with some of the police’s severest critics saying inefficiency in the country’s law enforcement services is now worse than ever.

Subject: Belgian news