The Genesis and Development of the Police Academy in Szczytno from the Perspective of the Thirtieth Anniversary of its Functioning Aleksander Cezary Babiński ORCID: 0000-0001-6446-6748 Police Academy in Szczytno, Poland Abstract. 2020 is another special year in the history of the Police College in Szczytno. The fourth decade of its existence begins in this year. At the same time, it is a good time to take a retrospective look at the past 30 years of functioning of this university. This is all the more valuable because its author has actively participated in its life for almost all of these years, as a listener and then as an employee (policeman) at the executive and management levels. The perspective of thirty years of functioning of the Police College presented in the article concerns primarily its evolution, which is a consequence of the expectations of the police management and the interior ministry. At the same time, it presents its development as an academic centre, providing education at an increasingly higher level. The real dimension of this direction of development is the University’s ability to award further, increasingly higher titles and degrees. This is the result of the involvement of the academic and teaching staff of the university, but also of its management. This article shows the path taken by the Police College in Szczytno from the university, being the resultant of the socio-political changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s of the last century, to the university being the leading academic centre in the Republic of Poland which educates in the field of social sciences and conducts research showing the relationships between the disciplines included in this one field of science. It not only allows the professional staff of the department’s services to be trained, but also to discover new opportunities for providing safety. Keywords: university, security, police education, science, education DOI: 10.5604/01.3001.0014.1577 http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0014.1577 Introduction The establishment of the Police Academy in Szczytno is closely related to the political situation in Poland resulting from the findings of the Round Table delibera- tion1. The creation of the first non-communist government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki after more than 40 years, gave hope for the construction of a new police apparatus of the state, not burdened with cooperation with the communist regime. Nobody had any doubts that the transformations of the police apparatus would also include educational activities. The deep need for changes in this area resulted not only from the significant changes in the vision of the security authorities, but from the under- standing of their social role, however above all from the need to remove ideological ballast from the educational programmes. The reforms carried out quite rapidly covered all educational levels in the Police. They also concerned the training of the 1 Raina P, Droga do ‘Okrągłego Stołu’. Zakulisowe rozmowy przygotowawcze.Warsaw, 1999. Internal Security, Special Issue 117 Aleksander Cezary Babiński officers which so far was carried out in the subsequent universities in Szczytno, i.e. the Military School of Citizens’ Militia established in 1954, the Officer’s College in Szczytno (in 1972–1989) and the Faculty of Public Order (based in Szczytno) of the Academy of Internal Affairs in Warsaw in 1989–19902. Aspirations regarding the takeover of the role of a university educating officers for the needs of the newly formed Police were reported by the Internal Affairs Acad- emy in Warsaw and its departments of State Security in Legionowo and Public Order in Szczytno. The department in Legionowo promoted its candidacy being aware that with the liquidation of the Security Service, its existence became pointless. The environment in Szczytno, by the voice of its leaders, expressed the will to leave the structures of the Academy of Internal Affairs, and to return to independent training only of the police officers. The competitors which still had a significant influence in the ministry questioned the ability of the school in Szczytno to func- tion independently as a college, accusing it of, i.e. a lack of the appropriate staff. There was also a concept of building everything from scratch somewhere around Poznań3. The determined attitude of the activists of the newly created Independent Self-Governing Trade Union of Policemen4 made the management of the minis- try follow the proposals of the activists from Szczytno. By making this decision, it was believed that, although the University in Szczytno has previously operated in politically entangled structures, it was able to develop strictly professional skills at the appropriate level and to separate the substantive interests of the staff from ideology in the research sphere. The proposal of Szczytno was considered to be the most reliable and substantively substantiated5. In the thirty-year period of operation of the Police Academy in Szczytno, five periods can be distinguished, which will become presented below. The period of 1990–1995 Formally, the process of creating the Police Academy in Szczytno was initiated under the Regulation of the Council of Ministers of September 10, 19906 and was coupled with the liquidation of the Academy of Internal Affairs. The Higher Military Education Act7 of 1965 still constituted the basic legal act defining its status. Based 2 Goettel M (Ed.), Wyższa Szkoła Policji 1990–1995. Księga jubileuszowa z okazji 5 rocznicy powołania. Szczytno, 1995, pp. 55–64. 3 Majer P, Od Ośrodka Szkolenia Oficerów Milicji Obywatelskiej do Wydziału Porządku Publicznego Akademii Spraw Wewnętrznych. Podstawowe przeobrażenia milicyjnej placówki dydaktycznej w Szczytnie w latach 1954–1990, [in:] Misiuk A, Goettel M (Eds), 50-lecie oficer- skiego szkolnictwa policyjnego w Szczytnie (1954–2004). Szczytno, 2004, p. 30. 4 NSZZP was registered in the Provincial Court in Warsaw on May 11, 1990, i.e. the day after the entry into force of the Police Act of April 6, 1990. 5 Majer P, Od Ośrodka Szkolenia…, op.cit., p. 30. 6 Regulation of the Council of Ministers of 10 September 1990 on the establishment of the Police Academy and the abolition of the Academy of Internal Affairs, Journal of Laws No. 64, item 343. 7 Act of 31 March 1965 on higher military education, Journal of Laws No. 14, item 102, as amended. 118 Internal Security, Special Issue The Genesis and Development of the Police Academy in Szczytno from the Perspective… on its art. 5 section 2 point 4, the Minister of the Interior issued the statute to the Police Academy on September 12, 19908. He defined Szczytno as the residence of the Police College. On the same day, the Minister provided the detailed organisa- tional structure of the university9. The College of Police was created as a university designed to prepare highly qualified police officers, teaching professional skills, as well as raising in a spirit of obedience to the law, respect for human dignity, and dedication to the security of the homeland. Therefore, the basic task of the University was to educate police officers in order to provide them with the modern specialist knowledge and pro- fessional skills necessary to carry out Police tasks. The Police Academy was also intended to conduct scientific research inspired by the needs of the Police. They were aimed at seeking the truth and were conducted in accordance with the ethics of the researcher. The scope of this research was meant to include: police sciences, law, forensics, criminology, and other disciplines forming the basis of the modern Police. The Minister of the Interior assigned himself the supreme supervision over the Police Academy, cooperating with the Minister of National Education in this respect. Direct supervision over the University was delegated by the Minister to the Chief of Police, which did not arouse any controversy over the fact that the Police Acad- emy was still being formulated. The Minister of the Interior obliged himself and the Chief of Police by means of the statute to provide the Police Academy with the necessary material and organisational assistance to carry out its scientific, didactic, and educational tasks. On September 1, 1990, sub-inspector. doc. dr hab. Mieczysław Goettel was appointed the first commander of the Police Academy, and was even directed to this position by trade union activists. He faced difficult organisational and per- sonal tasks. The involvement of trade unionists clearly indicated that the will of the Szczytno academy community was to build a completely different quality of school, which the new management of the Interior Ministry fully approved. This was dem- onstrated by the first inauguration of the academic year at the Police Academy, which took place on November 8, 1990, with the participation of the Deputy Minis- ter of Internal Affairs prof. dr hab. Jan Widacki. The expression of the new times was attended by, among others Fr. Bishop dr. Edmund Piszcz and the inaugural lecture given by Dr. Andrzej Misiuk on ‘Police traditions of the Second Polish Republic’. It became obvious that the Police Academy would cultivate these traditions, and would recall the memory of the policemen murdered in Soviet execution camps10. Decisions regarding entrusting the mission of a university of higher education to meet the needs of the ministry to Szczytno required strengthening of its scien- tific potential. An initiative was taken to fill the positions of professors, tutors and assistants through a competition. Substantially prepared employees in criminology, 8 Ordinance No. 90 of the Minister of the Interior of 12 September 1990 regarding the stat- ute for the Police Academy. Official Journal of the Ministry of Interior, No. 4, item 50. 9 Ordinance No. 89 of the Minister of the Interior of 12 September 1990 regarding the detailed organisational structure of the Police Academy.