Federal police officers will be trained as locksmiths, La Dernière Heure and Het Laatste Nieuws reported on Saturday. These officers will then be able to take the place of professional locksmiths during house searches. Locksmiths have been refusing to help the police more and more often.
Professional locksmiths are less and less inclined to work with the police as the Justice department takes too long to pay them, the Locksmiths Federation told La Dernière Heure.
“If we have trained locksmiths within our ranks, we can manage on our own”, says the Federal police. They want to train at least one officer per investigation team in Belgium. The initial training will be done at police academies and those police officers will then train other colleagues.
“You need to look at it as an emergency solution for urgent cases, when there really is no locksmith available and we need to get into the house”, says the Federal police’s press service.
The Brussels Times
