During a press conference on Monday, Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa, Minister for Home Affairs, National Security and Law Enforcement Byron Camilleri and the Prime Minister’s wife Lydia Abela, officially launched a specialised domestic violence unit which has been set up within the ranks of the Police Force.

Gafa, began by explaining the mission statement of the Malta Police Force. “The main aim for the police in the community is to offer a trusted and professional service in order to keep people’s safety in mind. This has to be done together with the community,” Gafa said.

Gafa went on to explain how in the past, this mission statement was applied to different specialised sectors within the Malta Police Force, such as financial crime, cyber-crime and so on. This mission statement must also be applied to the combatting of gender-based and domestic violence cases, he said.

Upon his appointment as police commissioner, Gafa said he has constantly worked for reform on how to improve the handling domestic violence cases. 100 days after, on the 1st of October this vision came to light and over the past couple of months, this scheme has helped lots of people who fell victims to domestic violence, Gafa explained.

In the past, whenever a domestic violence case was reported, the specific police station would investigate the case. Gafa went on to explain that these cases require certain expertise and one could not expect every police officer to specialise in all the different fields. Therefore these cases are now being transferred to this new unit for a more specialised approach.

Camilleri and Gafa both presented figures which indicate that this new unit is already bearing fruit. During the first month, starting from the first of October, an increase in reported cases was noted, Gafa explained. Camilleri went on to say that since its start, around 250 domestic violence cases have been worked on and from these cases more than 300 victims have been helped. Camilleri also said that from these 300 victims, 90 of them were males.

Abela stressed the importance of promoting these services. Speaking from a lawyer’s perspective, Abela said that on a daily basis she is faced with people who are victims of domestic abuse, therefore a specialised service like this will only help in raising awareness to help people to come out of the vicious cycle.

In a comment given to this newsroom, Camilleri said that in the past, whoever went to a police station to report a domestic violence crime would have to hope that the police officer in front of them would understand and be able to help him or her. This is not a shortcoming of the police officer as they would not be specialists in this field. Therefore with the creation of this unit, specialised support  could be provided. This does not mean that the role of the police station is removed when reporting a domestic crime, but rather the police station can offer transport and safety to the victim while transferring their case to the gender-based and domestic crimes unit.