Interior Ministry opens new agency, announces ‘new era for police’
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Thursday, October 6
Georgia’s Interior Minister, Giorgi Mgebrishvili, has opened a new agency of the Ministry, and said it would usher in a new era of Georgia’s police system.
“The name of the agency is the Joint Operation Centre, which offers the most recent methodological and technical approaches to prevention and opening of crimes,” Mgebrishvili said.
“It is a very ambitious project and through the support of the Prime Minister and our team we have managed to implement it,” Mgebrishvili stated.
“Only several developed foreign states have similar centres, but the Georgian incarnation has no equivalent,” Mgebrishvili added.
The Minister explained that the uniqueness of the centre lies in its multi-functioning.
“It ensures monitoring, analyses, joint management of police forces and their support. This innovation will enable us to react to crimes in a fastest manner or prevent them outrigh.
“The system also offers fastest ways to respond to traffic violations,” Mgebrishvili said.
The Minister was sure the new agency would “significantly increase the feeling of safety and security” amongst the public.
The Minister announced that while the centre was opened, the ministry also launched pilot projects in three towns of Georgia.
Without naming the towns Mgebrishvili said the projects would suggest “analyses and not statistics-based” police activities.
Mgebrishvili explained that statistics-based police activities were outdated and characteristic of the Soviet era, when the police planned their actions based on the statistical data of crimes.
In contrast with the approach, analyses-based systems allow police to be more focused on crime prevention.
Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili hoped that the Center would lead to a decline in crime rates in Georgia by 20-30% and minimize the number of road accidents by regulating traffic.
"This center will become a centralize hub joining technologies employed in the law-enforcement sector that seeks to manage the joint monitoring system, unite existing databases existing within the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and ensure timely analysis of the relevant data to provide specific information to patrol-officers and investigators, it aims at ensuring joint management of various units of police during the large-scale operations,” Kvirikashvili said.
Kvirikashvili believed the project would lead to Georgia's inclusion in a global system, and would allow Georgia to become an international ally in combatting terrorism, drugs and trafficking in humans.
