De Standaard claims candidates who were considered unfit during the police academy selection process are still being asked to continue the training because of the severe lack of officers. In Saturday’s edition of De Standaard, several anonymous sources criticised the political pressure to reach the objectives laid out by Home Affairs Minister Jan Jambon. When the Belga agency contacted the Minister’s spokesman, they denied the allegations and said they were “out of order.”
De Standaard says candidates with troubled pasts involving crime, brawling or hard drugs are passing selection. This is often despite the selection service expressing negative opinions and the candidate obtaining insufficient scores. People who were turned away during a previous selection process have recently been admitted to the police academy.
The Home Affairs Minister’s cabinet says the federal police have been ordered to look into the allegations and separate fact from fiction as soon as possible
In the meantime, the cabinet is denying there is any political pressure. “At no time did we exert any pressure to pass candidates, on the contrary,” says Mr Jambon’s spokesman Olivier Van Raemdonck.
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The Brussels Times
