​Images of a policeman and four gendarmes hovering helplessly around a suspect’s car, trying to break his window with their bare hands, unsuccessfully, and then the suspect fleeing, prove that law enforcement in Romania needs something other than a €32,000 BMW.

“Society is constantly changing, and the means used by lawbreakers are constantly improving and diversifying. In order to fight them effectively, we have to be in continuous dynamics, in terms of equipping the police with means of protection, as well as mobility.”

This is how the head of the police, chief quaestor Benone Matei justified the need to purchase from 300 to 600 BMWs worth 32,000 euros per piece without VAT.

“Mobility” is the key word here. In other words, the police will need powerful cars to catch speeding suspects.

But what do you do with suspects who stay put?

Catching them is more difficult than it seems, given the viral images that recently showed how in Sector 4 in Bucharest, a policeman and four gendarmes were unable to stop a violent driver who was stopped for breaking several traffic rules. .

Because he did not want to roll down the window, the police officer shouted at him several times, but to no avail. Then the gendarmes appeared, one of whom tried to break the window with his bare hands. He did not succeed, and the suspect, after hitting two cars and about to run over several pedestrians who were crossing the street, disappeared.

True, he was caught the next day, but you can’t help but wonder: how many policemen do you need to break a side window in a car?

Marian Godine posted a video on the Internet in which he wants to prove that one is enough if he has the right device.

It is probably a key fob that we found on the internet and which costs a fixed price of 10 lei, and which, as we found out this time, many drivers carry their keys with them for emergency situations.

This is what ordinary citizens do, the question is what does the Romanian police institutionally do when a dangerous suspect isolates himself in a car and disobeys the policeman’s orders?

Law 218/2002 in Article 36 states that the police can intervene with the use of force, according to the terms of the law, “against those who threaten the life, integrity or health of people or law enforcement agencies, as well as against those who threaten to destroy buildings or property of state or private interest”.

How were events to develop in the District 4 case?

A source from the Metropolitan police explained to me that in this case the policeman should have had at least a telescopic stick with him, which he could use to break the window. Parenthetically, the source also notes that in European countries, the police are equipped with hammers with special heads that can easily break windows.

“They are similar to those on STB buses, emergency knockers,” explained the policeman, who also wondered why the policeman was alone in this situation and not accompanied by a colleague, as usual.

Another problem that the source I spoke to pointed out is that the police are not trained to deal with such situations. “There is no such preparation, so people on the ground do not know how to react.”

Indeed, a documentary produced by the Recorder last year quoted several police officers, both Roads and Public Order, who said that in 20 years on the job, or even 29 years, they could not recall spending even one hour of physical teaching.

“We are only required to work at the level of the position, not to study”, “We apply the procedures of immobilizing a person only by the ear”, – say the policemen interviewed by the Rector.

What does the theory say?

There is a document adopted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs entitled “Instructions on basic police measures” from 2019, which states that in a situation where a suspect refuses to get out of the car, the policeman asks him to get out (which happened), then isolates the place, according to the procedure for conducting the investigation the fact of an accident, removing persons of interest, and then requests the support of the nearest police crew to block the vehicle, by deploying special vehicles. before and behind him.

It is important that the instructions further state: “(the police officer) uses, after a previous warning, irritant tear substances by spraying them into the ventilation device of the vehicle in question or other points through which the mixture can enter the interior of the vehicle in order to induce the driver to get out of it “.

We cannot know what equipment the law enforcement officers who appear in the recording we are talking about were carrying. However, we know that none of the above was used.

This time we’re left with images of a policeman yelling at a potentially dangerous driver (as it turns out) who refuses to listen, and a gendarme trying to break a car window with his bare hands.

And, of course, with a note in the title.