A video showing Polish police trainees simulating a car chase by pushing vehicles round a course rather than driving them to save on petrol has triggered criticism the government is starving the service of funds. The video shows a Polish police van powered by a group of students in pursuit of a white car, pushed by two people. As it rounds a corner the white car is then intercepted by a second police van, propelled by another band of labouring students.
The low-speed chase at the college in the southern city of Katowice raised concerns over funding for police training, especially after it emerged that staff at the centre also used their own money for text books. "The government is excited about reforming the police but they are not really interested as there is no money for training or equipping officers," said Roman Wierzbicki, head of the Katowice branch of the police trade union, after watching the film.
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Jozef Kogut, a former senior police commander and now head of a victims support association, said the video demonstrated just how impoverished the police had become. "As we can see, cost cutting in the police has now reached absurd levels," he said. "After classes like this the officers won't be much good at catching fleeing bandits. Everything will be too fast for them."
Inspector Dorota Matys, a spokesman for the college, defended the exercise, explaining that as it was officially "static" and designed to teach students how to remove suspects from cars there was no need to start the engines. Inspector Jacek Kosmaty, a lecturer from the training centre who leaked the video, said he made it public to draw attention to the “absurd savings” now enforced on the college. “It is sad that that we have to conduct classes where students have to push cars to save petrol”, he said.
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