Police may consider volunteers

The heads of the local and federal police forces and interior minister Joëlle Milquet are not opposed to a proposal to allow volunteers into the police, reports De Tijd. “Police officers have more and more tasks to perform,” says Philip Pirard, head of Hasselt’s local police. “After all, volunteers have long been helping out the fire brigade, so why not the police? They could, for example, direct traffic, issue parking tickets or be present at major events.” Milquet claims to be “open to new ideas”. There are, however, many obstacles to this proposal, mostly legal: Belgian law explicitly forbids it, and the status of the police is complex.