Justice minister wants federal police force
The justice and police minister, Ruth Metzler, has called for the creation of a federal police force.
Under the current system, the federal government has to rely on the cantons to provide police officers for federal security, or it has to deploy soldiers.
In an interview with the regional daily newspaper “Aargauer Zeitung” on Thursday, Metzler said Switzerland did not have enough security police and was short of around 800 to 1,000 officers.
Metzler said that either a federal police force was needed or the cantons should be obliged to make a number of police officers available to the federal government.
She emphasised that the government relied too much on the armed forces to handle jobs normally carried out by the police. “We cannot keep on building up the army in order to cover police tasks,” Metzler was quoted as saying.
Building up police forces was more important, she said, as it would save the army from having to take on subsidiary tasks.
“We can’t carry on sending soldiers as escorts on airplanes, only because the cantons do not have not enough policemen,” she said in the interview.
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