Malta’s Police Corps is still struggling to recover from scandal after scandal that has rocked it to the core this last year or so.

From allegations of corruptions to mass retirements and resignations, not to mention the now infamous Gzira shooting, the Police Commissioner Michael Cassar certainly has his work cut out for him.

Just a decade or so ago, joining the Police Corps was normally for families that were brought up in the tradition of doing so, or those who had no qualifications and could not find anything that paid better. Things have improved since then, but there are still many issues that need to be addressed.

Things were not always so. Independent Malta inherited a highly organised and motivated Police Corps that was previously marshalled by the British. It had specialised units and was run on the lines of the UK police forces at the time.

Somewhere, something went wrong. Life in Malta changed very rapidly. As tourism and progress crept in, what was needed from the Police Corps changed drastically and very rapidly. Until the late 1980s, there was not much specialisation and the only real squads which were deployed were district police and riot police on horseback.

Fast forward to the new millennium. In today’s world, we have forms of crime that were not around before. Sex crime, human trafficking, drug crime, economic crimes, cyber crime and many others. Tet still ,we seem to be staffed with a Police Corps that has too many overweight officers, too many unskilled officers, too many officers who are far too old and too many officers who quite frankly, do not have the skills or knowhow to do anything to prevent or react to a crime that has been committed.

In most European countries, being a police officer is a career decision. People are specifically trained for the job and have every opportunity to specialise and move up the career ladder through training and promotions as they get older.

In Malta, unfortunately, it is seen as just a job. Things have improved, but the Police Corps is just a job. People join up, do their 25 years of service and then retire with pension and take on another job, and that is the reality of what is going on.

As we have said, things have improved, but the Corps needs highly trained and dedicated officers if it is to remain a relative authority in a very quickly changing Malta. The training of new police officers has improved vastly, but there is no doubt that a sustained training and retraining programme needs to be in place to ensure that our law enforcers are up to speed on all developments that are related to keeping Malta a safe place. Those who are overweight and ageing must either be slowly phased out.