Police personnel trained on Universal Children’s Day

Lawyers of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Katarzyna Wiśniewska and Piotr Kubaszewski, have conducted a training session for the instructors and students of the Centre for Police Training in Legionowo to commemorate the Universal Children’s Day.

The session was devoted to the standards of uniformed services work under the European Convention on Human Rights. The HFHR lawyers focused primarily on the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment and presented key judgments of the European Court of Human Rights entered in cases involving Poland. Recommendations of the UN and the Council of Europe regarding police violence were also presented.

The lawyers referred to the draft legislative guidelines for an amendment to the Police Act prepared by the Chief Commissioner of the Police in the beginning of 2014. The draft sought to create a legal framework for documenting police interventions conducted with the use of audio and video recording equipment. A year later, the Chief Commissioner’s proposals were embedded in the Strategy of Actions Aiming at Combating Human Rights Abuses by Police Officers, a policy document of the Ministry of the Interior. However, the Ministry ceased working on the document already during the term of the last Parliament.

During the training session, students of the Centre for Police Training also learnt about the procedure of submitting an application to the European Court of Human Rights.