LGBT community members have a high level of trust in police officers, said the head of the criminal police for combating violent crimes Srdjan Korac, stating that there is a tendency of drops in the number of submissions by LGBT people when they are the injured party.
At the beginning of this year, as he stated, there were 69 applications where LGBT persons were reported as injured, while 82 applications were filed in the same period last year.
Korac, who is the first contact person to work with the LGBT community, said that LGBT people are delighted with the conduct of the police officers.
"A great degree of trust in police officers was created, which will be our mission also in the future, to continue professionally, humanly and morally to act urgently and with additional sensitivity when the LGBT community is concerned," Korac said in an interview with MINA.
He said that sexual orientation and gender identity are an integral part of every person's personality and can not, therefore, be grounds for any form of discrimination or abuse.
"Discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is any exclusion, inequality, limitation or giving advantages over sexual orientation or gender identity, to reverse equality before the law," he said.
Korac added that the Government recognized this problem and adopted the Strategy for Improving the Quality of Life of the LGBT Community in Montenegro in 2013.
As he pointed out, goals and tasks were defined through this Strategy and one of them was the creation of a Trust Team consisting of members of the Police Administration and the LGBT community.
Through the implementation of their obligations, the Police Administration has defined objectives and tasks, which are reflected in the constant establishment and implementation of quality, timely and constructive communication between the LGBT community and the Police Administration, constant monitoring of LGBT people's safety and finding the best models to address their problems", explained Korac.
He said the Trust team's task is also monitoring the development of a contact network of the police officers working with LGBT community, supporting all activities related to police capacity reinforcement, and cooperation with international partners monitoring the LGBT inclusion process.
"The Trust team's objectives and tasks are to trust and cooperate with state bodies, to make proposals, to implement certain measures to achieve better results regarding the full acceptance of LGBT in the community and contribute to strengthening the criminal-law protection of LGBT persons," Korac said.
Asked whether LGBT people reported having suffered violence from their family members, Korac replied that they did not have such complaints.
"However, field information speaks differently. We are trying to find the best model to help LGBT people who have suffered the violence of their closest ones, from their family," he noted.
Korac added that the non-governmental sector also invests significant efforts in finding the best solutions.
"Unfortunately, they are still not ready to cooperate with the police, and we have a legal and legislative barrier of putting such cases into operation and their solving," he said.
Korac said that other applications are mostly concerning the negative comments on the LGBT community’s account.
As he pointed out, the non-governmental sector filed 66 complaints during March and April this year, all referring to the submission of negative comments on Facebook.
"They addressed the Police Administration and we have acted urgently on all their applications. A large number of complaints were forwarded to other security centers due to the local jurisdiction, several applications were completed by a warning issuance, while others were brought into operation," Korac said.
According to him, there were three applications where LGBT persons were injured, in direct attacks by unknown persons.
"With the rapid intervention of the police, we managed to identify, carry out criminal investigation and make the relevant Prosecution familiar with this," Korac said.
The Prosecution, as he added, reported in one case as not having appropriate authorizations, i.e., in a short procedure they sent the suspicious person to the branch delict department in Podgorica, and in the second case the person has been criminally processed and submitted to the prosecutor for evaluation and decision making.
When asked if he believes the police team for contact and cooperation with LGBT people fulfilled their mission, Korac said that he is sure that in their work so far, they fully justified their goal of establishment and existence.
"For some years now, the officials of the security center in Podgorica, and I am certain in other cities as well, give their maximum in work with the LGBT community and provision of additional sensibility in the process," Korac said.
This, as he adds, is reflected in a large number of praises of the injured, non-governmental sector and international partners who follow the work of the Montenegrin police and development on the LGBT community.
Korac emphasized that the Trust team, made up of experts with a great life and professional experience, has done a great job. They carried out a large number of training of police officers in various police structures or units.
According to him, by arriving in Montenegro itself, the first contact with police officers at the border crossings adds extra confidence.
"What is very interesting from practice and it is commendable that earlier all the complaints by LGBT community came first to me, I was the first contact person; then I filtered them further to police officers," he said.
In the past few years, as he said, this is no longer the case, LGBT people are coming to security centers and filing complaints themselves.
Text by MINA News, on April 28th, 2019, read more at Vijesti
