Back with the police after seven-year term in prison service

Markku Salminen named National Police Commissioner

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By Teuvo Arolainen
     
      Markku Salminen, the 57-year-old Director General of the Criminal Sanctions Agency, who was recently appointed to the post of Finland’s National Police Commissioner, is not easily left at a loss for words.
      Upon hearing a boast of someone catching an eight-kilo pike, Salminen, an experienced fisherman who has just returned from a holiday in Cuba, has an instant response: "I saw a barracuda and a sea snake".
      "In other respects the trip was straight out of Hemingway. I got as many fish as the Old Man in the story", he adds.
     
Salminen was in Cuba on a long-awaited holiday when he was named Finland’s top-ranking police official.
      "The timing was a coincidence. The decision on the appointment was to have been made already before the trip", he says.
     
The task is a new one for Salminen, but the organisation is a familiar one. From 1969 to 1998 he worked with the police.
      "It was only after taking the non-commissioned police officers’course at the age of 30 that I thought that I might take a law degree", he said.
      The effort was worth it. At first he became a summer replacement for a rural police chief in the Häme region, and finally the deputy chief of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
      From the NBI, Salminen went to the prison service for seven years, to work as a "warehouse keeper", as he calls it.
     
"I thought long whether or not to apply for the post of National Police Commissioner", Salminen says.
      He finally came up with two good reasons to submit his application. "All easy places to make changes had already been gone through" at the prison service. He felt that with the police he would be "itching to do a bit of remodelling in certain areas".
      Salminen does not want to reveal any precise list of changes he wants to enact, but he does say that he wants to see if it is possible to "get more efficiency" out of the organisation.
      He says that greater efficiency has already been achieved in investigation of serial crimes, the expanding of a DNA register, and through new technical equipment.
     
Salminen sees the police primarily as an alarm mechanism for violent situations.
      "The need is most urgent when a serious crime is under preparation."
      "On a general level it is important to prevent crime, to keep the rate of solving homicides at a high level, to deal with cases of economic crime with great social impact, and to minimise traffic violations", he says.
      "On the other hand, we could also leave out tasks that are not as important from the citizens’ point of view. I began my career by standing in front of the Presidential Palace doing nothing. That could have been taken care of with a security camera."
      "To move things forward we need the support of our own rank and file, the trade unions, and political decision makers", Salminen says.
     
A few weeks ago Deputy Chancellor of Justice Jaakko Jonkka published a critical report on the activities of the police. The lax monitoring of clandestine investigation methods was sharply criticised.
      According to Markku Salminen, the supervision of coercive measures has to work.
      "Legislation is a tool of the police. The law on coercive measures must give a precise picture of what a police officer can do."
      Salminen agrees with his predecessor Reijo Najulapää that the police do not need a separate internal supervisory organisation.
     
The impression that Markku Salminen has projected to the police, and elsewhere, is that of a man with a healthy amount of self-esteem.
      He is said to have had to answer to more than 100 complaints.
      "In the decisions, it was noted more than 100 times that civil servant Salminen acted exactly as he should have", he says.
      "Complaints are one of the ways that people sabotage investigations, and they are part of the everyday life of an economic crimes investigator. I had some of the most difficult cases in the NBI and I even tried to help my fellow officers."
     
Salminen has other mementoes from his time in the NBI, including gifts from his colleagues at the economic crime squad: "a prophet’s cape, and a paragraph key".
      On top of that, someone came up with a nickname: "Prince of Crime".
      "Actually, the original title was ‘Criminal Prince’", he laughs.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.12.2004

More on this subject:
 A policeman from Toijala

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Report criticises shortcomings of supervision of police activities (18.11.2004)
  National Police Commissioner Naulapää sees no need for internal affairs unit (13.12.2004)

TEUVO AROLAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
teuvo.arolainen@hs.fi