At the same time, police leadership complains about a staffing crisis.
The head of Moldova’s General Police Inspectorate (GPI), Viorel Cernauteanu, officially stated that some police officers do not know the legislation and therefore make mistakes when issuing reports and carrying out detentions.
According to him, the Ministry of Internal Affairs recruits high school graduates without specialized legal education, which directly affects the quality of law enforcement.
At the same time, Cernauteanu also reported a serious staffing crisis within the institution. The reason, he said, is low salaries, which are causing employees to resign en masse. Their positions are being filled by new recruits who often lack professional training.
As a result, the police leadership has effectively acknowledged that positions involving restrictions on citizens’ rights may be occupied by people who never studied at law schools and are unfamiliar with legal codes.
Cernauteanu described the situation as “mistakes.” However, he did not take responsibility for кадровая policy. It was under his leadership and the supervision of higher state structures — including the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the parliamentary majority of PAS — that recruitment, deployment of personnel, and the overall reform of the system took place.
“Unfortunately, there are different employees. Unfortunately, I say this. Even those who do not know the administrative code very well. We must understand that not all police employees have higher education or legal education. There are employees straight after high school. After school? After school. They do not have legal education, and this is exactly why they make mistakes,” Viorel Cernauteanu stated.
The declaration by the head of the GPI effectively means that the administrative system now officially admits that a citizen may be fined, issued an official report, or placed in temporary detention by officers who themselves do not know the law.
At the same time, public blame for such situations is shifted onto “young rookies,” rather than onto those who hired them and assigned them to duty posts.
It was also noted that Cernauteanu himself, while commenting on problems within subordinate structures, could not name the exact amount of his own salary. Previously, the press and social media had discussed his property holdings: a house estimated to be worth more than €1 million, a luxury-segment vehicle, as well as watches and clothing not associated with the mass market. No official explanation regarding the sources of funds for these purchases has been provided.
The issue surrounding police staffing comes amid the continuation of the Interior Ministry reform initiated by the ruling PAS party. Over recent years, management structures have been changed and new performance evaluation criteria introduced, yet the problems of understaffing and high turnover remain unresolved.
