THE ALBANIAN PUBLIC'S TRUST IN SECURITY: STUMBLING BLOCKS TO EU NEGOTIATIONS According to the Law on the Periodic Evaluation of Officials of the State Police, the National Guard and the SICMI, as amended, the structure of the vetting of these institutions is done in two phases and by two different structures: ● The first phase is done by the Outer Evaluation Committee- a body constituted of 5 officials selected from the High Inspectorate of Declaration and Audit of Assets and Conflicts of Interest, 5 professors from the University of Tirana, and 5 people hired through professional competition. ● This Committee conducts a series of checks and evaluations on the quality of the character, the regularity of their wealth and assets with relation to their wages, and the general regularity of their hiring and academic achievement. This committee conducts this vetting on high-ranking officials in the State Police and the staff of the SICMI. The committee is an independent institution. ● The second phase will be done by the SICMI and it will be directed toward the entire remaining structure of the State Police and the National Guard, including around 12000 people in total. If we were to analyze the general process of the police vetting and evaluation, we can deduct that this process has been developing at a slow pace. Out of a list of around 250 officials that are in line to be evaluated in the first phase, only 16 have been evaluated thus far, a clear indicator of the slow progress of this process. Out of the 16 officials that have been evaluated, only one official has failed the evaluation, the Director of the Grievance Sector of the SICMI. There is currently no indication of when the second phase will start. 20 2.3. Control and Oversight from the Judiciary System The State Police is fully within the jurisdiction of the courts, and therefore all cases related to police are brought before the courts with no exception. According to the Code of Criminal Procedures, all citizens have the right to file charges against the security institutions and or individuals representing these institutions. However, even though these cases have always been large in number, the number of disciplinary measures or punishments handed down to the State Police have been rare by comparison. This indicates that the judiciary system as a way of control and oversight of the State Police is a poor remedy to problems relating to police abuses, issues of bad practices, and violations. 2.4. Control and Oversight from the Institution Created by the Justice Reform The institutions set up by the justice reform are greatly related to the State Police in their functionality. According to the law on the matter, the State Police must immediately inform the NBI in any case that it has information or it finds that there are cases of passive or active 20 The information on this subsection has been extracted from the website of the Outer Evaluation Committee: http://kjv.al/ 28