In an effort to regain public acceptance, the government is disbanding units of the widely despised secret police, reducing eavesdropping and focusing police resources on fighting crime, commanders say.
Many of the opposition activists the secret police had long made a practice of watching and harassing under one-party Communist rule became lawmakers and Cabinet ministers this year.Six undercover departments are being disbanded, there will be less bugging and units that inspected foreign mail and monitored foreign radio broadcasts will be dissolved, police officials told a news conference.
"The Interior Ministry is going to strive for public acceptance and prestige," said Wojciech Garstka, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police.
Garstka was joined by the deputy chiefs of the regular and secret police for the unusual news conference Wednesday.
He characterized the changes being made in the country's police as "perhaps the deepest in postwar history."
Despite Solidarity's leading role in the new government, the Interior Ministry is still run by the Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, a long-time communist and confidant of President Wojciech Jaruzelski.
Jerzy Karpacz, deputy chief of the secret police, said the officers "not only fully accept these changes, but are aware that the changes are irreversible. If any are found with a different view, they will have to leave the force."
The secret police long symbolized communist control by fear. They are bitterly remembered as the executors of Stalinist purges, as infiltrators of opposition groups and as thugs who roughed up activists.
Three rogue officers and their commander from the so-called "fourth department," which spied on the church, were convicted of the 1984 kidnapping and murder of Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, a charismatic Solidarity priest.
The fourth department and five other units, including those responsible for surveillance of citizens' loyalty and protection of the agricultural, manufacturing and arms industries have been liquidated, Garstka announced.
Despite the changes, three new secret police units will be formed, he said. One will guard against political extremists and terrorists who "do not want to become legal" under new freedoms, another will safeguard the economy against espionage and disruption and a third will analyze security information and develop new methods, especially for crime prevention, he said.
More emphasis will be put on protecting public safety and property, Garstka said, and some secret police officers will be transferred to help combat what he said was an alarming rise in thefts and burglaries.
There are now about 1,250 crimes per 100,000 people annually, which Garstka said is relatively low by Western standards. But more car break-ins and other crimes are being reported as the economic situation worsens and the gap between rich and poor widens.