Outgoing Swiss federal police chief warns of insufficient resources

The Fedpol boss, Nicoletta della Valle, leaves her job on January 31. Keystone-SDA

The outgoing director of the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol), Nicoletta della Valle, has warned that officers, prosecutors and investigators in Switzerland have insufficient resources to do their work.

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As long as citizens are not aware of the dangers posed by organised crime, for example, there will be no public pressure to increase funding for police work, della Valle told reporters in Bern on Friday.

Abroad, the pressure on politicians only came following “the first deaths on the streets”, she added.

Della Valle, who leaves her job on January 31, said politicians were not deliberately putting the brakes on police work but that there are “other priorities than internal security”.

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She said she would not like to be in the shoes of politicians who have to take the decisions.

Della Valle again repeated a phrase she has used over the past ten years in office: “I work with the resources I am given”. Fedpol receives CHF308 million a year ($334 million), which corresponds to the cost of one and a half F-35 fighter jets.

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She stressed that her comments were not intended to play the army off against the police. But the fact is that her staff work overtime equivalent to one hundred full-time positions every year, she said.

“If you squeeze the lemon too hard, employees will leave,” she declared.

Improve cantonal data exchange

In order to effectively combat terrorism and organised crime – the two hottest issues for the federal police – exchange of information between the authorities must be improved, said the Fedpol boss.

The national police data exchange called Polap is still in its infancy and there are unresolved issues with the cantons. “We currently have a better exchange with authorities from the Schengen area than within Switzerland,” she said.

Della Valle said there were also issues with the fight against money laundering, adding that she is not sure whether the planned revision of legislation would be successful.

“I am taking the liberty of calling things as they are, which not everyone is happy about,” she concluded.

Translated from German by DeepL/sb

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