Bill to expand municipal police powers on hold due to more 'pressing' matters
A bill which would give Tallinn's Municipal Police (Mupo) extended powers, including the right to detain people and use handcuffs and telescopic batons, is on hold due to more pressing issues, Interior Minister Igor Taro (Eesti 200) said.
A bill is undergoing Riigikogu processing. If it passed, it would allow local governments more generally to employ law enforcement officers, yet it does not fully define their rights and powers. Adopting the proposed Mupo bill would resolve this issue, proponents say.
"As soon as we can go through all the details with stakeholders and reach an agreement that it could go to a sitting, then I believe the prime minister will also put it on the agenda," Taro told "Aktuaalne kaamera."
The bill has stalled because, in the meantime, more urgent issues under the ministry's purview have had to be dealt with, including license plate recognition cameras and issues relating to intimate partner violence, Taro said.
Mupo has for a long time sought additional powers. For example, while the authority may impose a prohibition on staying in a certain location, they are not permitted to disperse large gatherings, even in locations where these are barred.
Head of the Police and Border Guard College and former interior minister Kristjan Jaani said there was "no kind of toolkit for how to apply these instruments effectively in a situation where perhaps prevention and just talking are not enough."
Expanding the powers of local government law enforcement officers nationwide would help reduce the police workload, allowing them to focus on more serious problems, Jaani said.
The bill, if passed, would also give municipal police officers the right to check people for intoxication, take them to a sobering-up facility, detain individuals, and also use direct coercion, such as a telescopic baton and handcuffs.
Elari Kasemets, head of the Tallinn Mupo, said that coercion need not always mean "special equipment," nor would granting Mupo the right to detain people spell the capital starting to run its own detention facility.
"We are primarily talking about situations where we have a perpetrator of some offense, and we have the right to detain them at the scene and take them to a police station for further proceedings, if it is truly an incident that requires more time, or to detain them for the time it takes to carry out procedural actions," Jaani added.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
Source: "Aktuaalne kaamera"
