"According to the legal assessment of the Ministry of the Interior and the PPA, the provisions of the Assistant Police Officer Act concerning checks on whether applicants meet the requirements contain shortcomings," said Roger Kumm, head of the PPA's Prevention and Offense Proceedings Bureau.

"The current law requires the PPA to check whether applicants meet the requirements, but the legal provisions allowing these checks to be carried out are too general," he said.

"As a new Assistant Police Officer Act is currently being considered by the Riigikogu and, among other things, provides more precise legal grounds for checking whether applicants meet the requirements, we have decided not to accept new applications until the legislative amendments enter into force," Kumm said.

The draft of the new Assistant Police Officer Act expands assistant police officers' duties and the circumstances in which they can be deployed, while also introducing more extensive training. "This also means that many current assistant police officers will have to undergo retraining. We will use the recruitment pause over the coming months to prepare for changes to training and the implementation of the new law," Kumm said.

"Suspending the recruitment of assistant police officers was a difficult decision because every volunteer is extremely valuable to the police. However, as the new bill provides a very clear solution to the shortcomings identified in the current legal provisions, it is certainly right to wait for these legislative amendments to take effect," Kumm added.

The PPA has more than 1,200 assistant police officers who contributed more than 170,000 hours to police work in 2025. The PPA plans to increase the number of assistant police officers to 1,500 by 2029. The PPA recruited 302 new assistant police officers last year and has recruited 188 so far in 2026.

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