TIRANA, Jan. 7 – Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri made a presentation Tuesday to introduce what he called successes of the police and law-enforcement authorities in the fight against crime and drug traffic in 2014.
The fight against drug traffic topped the list, culminating with the operation in the southern Lazarat commune in June, when police destroyed hundreds of thousands of marijuana plants and also burned down about a hundred tons of cannabis packaged for trafficking.
Tahiri said that they cut and burnt more than 530,000 cannabis plants and 102 tons of cannabis, five times more than a year ago.
The minister also said that fighting corruption inside the police was another indicator of the seriousness authorities to “returning police to the people” in an effort to increase security.
The minister said there had been other successes in the reduced number of murders, house thefts, road accidents and others.
But the opposition Democratic Party responded the same day saying that the minister’s numbers are not true.
An opposition critic referred to a recent shootout near Tirana’s police headquarters that left one dead and injured others to point to the inefficiency of the police work to fight crime and the opposition says are criminal links to the government.
One of the injured people injured in this week’s shootout was an off-duty police officer with ties to a known criminal, who was arrested after the shootout.
The opposition representative said the government had fired professional police officers and hired crime-related people for key positions.
