Greece

AuthorJames Farsedakis
Pages436-448

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Official country name: Hellenic Republic

Capital: Athens

Geographic description: The southeastern end of the Balkans and Europe

Population: 10,668,354 (est. 2005)

LAW ENFORCEMENT
History

The police institution in Greece dates from the ancient times as does the history and the language of the country. From the ancient Greek words polis and politeia derives the Latin politia and the terms used in different languages police, polizei, and so on. Distinguished representatives of the ancient Greek intelligentsia had observed the importance of public order. The great philosopher Aristotle had written that "a town is impossible to function without the necessary Authorities and it is impossible to exist when there is no order."

The Athenian orator Demosthenes noted that "there is nothing more beautiful for human kind than order" and the dramaturge Sophocles taught from the theater stage "there is nothing worse than anarchy." The information on the police institution in ancient Greece comes from the works of historians, philosophers, and poets as well as from inscriptions found after excavations in various archaeological sites.

In Athens there were a number of administrative agents entrusted with police duties. Reference is made to market inspection police, police agronomists, metronomes, wheat guards, trade intendants, gynaeconomes, road builders, wall constructors, fountain intendants, and post guards. Police duties were also exercised by the mayors, the generals, the polemarch, the chairman of the People's Assembly, and the first of the nine archons, the so-called eponymos.

All citizens, even the most famous ones, had the possibility to participate in all these police tasks. It is known that Themistocles had been a fountain intendant and Demosthenes a wheat intendant. The basic characteristics of the Athenian police institution were its social character and the inexistence of a secret police—natural characteristics of the city where democracy was born and flourished. According to inscriptions, the police organization in the other Greek cities of the mainland and the insular area, of the Middle East and of southern Italy, was similar to the Athenian.

The Greek police institutions remained intact during the first two centuries of the Roman conquest, when the Greek cities were still maintaining certain independence. The Greek systems of government collapsed under the

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rule of the emperor Karakallas. This is the period of the beginning of the general implementation of the Roman police institutions that were not different from those of the Greeks.

During the years of the Byzantine Empire these institutions form progressively their own Greek character, the basic points of which are maintained during the entire period of the Turkish domination in Greece and in the Balkans, as a system of local self-government under military control. Its members have participated actively to the national revolution of 1821.

With the creation of the new independent Greek state (1830) after the war for independence, a dual police system was established, having at the same time a Gendarmerie at a general level and a Municipal Police at a local level. This system with different organizational variations as to the Municipal Police was in effect until 1906, when the Gendarmerie undertook the surveillance of the entire country.

In 1920 the dual police system came back into effect with the maintenance of the Gendarmerie and the creation of the City Police. Between 1921 and 1925 the new Police Corps gradually established itself in the cities of Athens, Piraeus, Patras, and Corfu. This police system was in effect until 1984, when the Gendarmerie and the City Police were amalgamated into one corps, under the name Hellenic Police.

Character, Administration, and Mission

The Hellenic Police consists in a special armed force with its own laws and regulations, which vary from the provisions governing the civil personnel. It has a military qualification and discipline. The emblem of the Hellenic Police is a composition of signs portraying the official state emblem, an olive tree branch and the classic pair of scales, both ancient Greek symbols of peace and justice. The competence of the Hellenic Police extends to the entire state. The only sectors it does not survey are those that fall within the competence of the Port Police and the Customs Authorities. With these two authorities the police maintain a close cooperation within all service echelons.

From an administrative point of view the Hellenic Police is responsible to the Ministry of Public Order. The history and the meaning of the term public order is the same as that of the term formulated with particular emphasis, as mentioned earlier, by the prominent representatives of the ancient Greek intelligentsia: Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Sophocles. The Fire Department also belongs to the Ministry of Public Order.

In the context of the Resolutions of the Ministers Cabinet and the other government organizations, the Ministry of Public Order is responsible for laying down the general policy concerning public order and the security of the country. The minister of public order supervises all the services of the ministry and instructs, coordinates, and surveys their operation. The chief of the Hellenic Police is responsible for its command and is directly responsible to the minister for the exercise of his duties.

The principal missions of the Hellenic Police are to safeguard and maintain public order, to ensure the civil defense of the country, and to contribute in the safeguard of the national defense in cooperation with the armed forces. Besides these principal missions the police have other specific duties: the maintenance of order in courts, the transfer of prisoners, the external guarding of prisons, the trial of minor offenses or violations, the conduct of preliminary investigations under the supervision of the Office of the Public Prosecutor, the issue of police provisions setting penalties for violations, the participation, with other state organizations, in matters concerning road traffic, public health, the protection of the environment, protection of juveniles, crime prevention, and so on.

Structure and Organization

The organization of the Ministry of Public Order has a decentralizing character and includes two categories of services: central and regional.

Central services are the offices of the minister, the assistant minister, and the secretary general of the ministry and the headquarters of the chief of the Hellenic Police and of the two lieutenant generals. Central services also form the branches of Police Security and Order and Administrative Support, and Financial-Technical and Informatics as well as the offices of the Chief of the Exchequer, the Audit Department, the Legal Adviser of the Administration, the Ordered Expenses Officers, and the Statistics Office of the National Statistics Service of Greece.

Regional services are the General Police Directorates of Attica and Thessalonica, 3 general police inspectorates, 12 police inspectorates, 51 police departments of prefectures and the services belonging to the latter, namely the police stations, security stations, traffic stations, market inspection stations, and aliens sections, and police posts.

The services that cover rural areas exercise general police duties. The branches form the organizational framework of the function, competence, and activities of the Ministry of Public Order and there is a fair distribution of the work to the various competent and specialized services and personnel. When it is deemed necessary, the branches cover each other's work through coordination by the ministry and the chief of the Hellenic Police.

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The Branch of Police Security and Order consists of the departments of General Policing, Traffic, Public Security, State Security, Aliens, and International Police Cooperation.

The Branch of Administrative Support consists of the departments of Police Personnel, Civil Personnel, Studies, Computer Information, Training, Financial Matters, Technical Matters, and Public Relations. Administrative support is also offered by six self-sufficient services, which are directly responsible to the minister of public order: the departments of Health, Exchequer and Audit, Financial Inspection, Financial Management, Management of Materials, and Technical Applications of South Greece. Seven other self-sufficient services are directly responsible to the chief of police: the Directorate for the Confrontation of Special Violent Crimes, for the Security of Olympic Games, for Internal Affairs, for the Security of the President of the Republic, for the Security of the President and the Members of the Government, for Criminological Researches, and of Aerial Means.

The General Police...

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