Police chief Jaroslav Spisiak has paid out his plans for the police force for this year, and has bravely said that if he doesn’t meet the targets, he will step down from the post.
One thing that he probably has least direct control over concerns the number of road accidents in the country, which he hopes to cut by 5,000 compared to 2010.
At a press conference yesterday, Spisiak said he wanted to gain the faith and support of the public by announcing the goals in advance, instead of only revealing the most favourable results afterwards, as has been the case to date in his opinion. Spisiak said that general goals would have to be achieved or he would resign, although they would not necessarily have to be met to one hundred percent.
Spisiak wants to focus on traffic accidents in particular, as he feels that the primary task of the police is to protect lives. He noted how there had been 345 road deaths in Slovakia last year, while he hopes to cut this figure by around 23% this year, meaning 5,000 fewer accidents overall.
There were precisely 21,595 traffic accidents reported last year, and so this year they hope to get this down to below 16,595. Spisiak boasted that so far this year there had been 2,209 reported accidents, 880 fewer than in 2010, which he pointed out was a record year.
So far in 2011 road accidents have claimed the lives of 38 people, with the figures for serious and mild injuries from road accidents also down significantly. Let’s hope Spisiak reaches his goal, not for his sake, but for the sake of the mostly innocent people who are killed or harmed on Slovak roads.