How many crimes in Poland are committed annually by foreigners? Bartosz Kownacki, an MP from Law and Justice (PiS), tried to find an answer to this question. After submitting two parliamentary interpellations, he received only one reply. Why? Because it turned out that the data are truly alarming…
From the beginning, Donald Tusk’s government fought against the Border Protection Movement (Ruch Obrony Granic), which reacted to cases of migrants being sent from Germany to Poland. Recently, by decision of the prime minister himself, Poland also opened several border crossings on the border with Belarus, which may trigger further waves of illegal migration. In addition, there is the migration pact, which is being increasingly forcefully pushed through at the EU level. Although Tusk insists that Poland will not be taken into account in this matter, Brussels has not denied that our country could be permanently excluded from the compulsory relocation mechanism.
Therefore… Bartosz Kownacki, an MP from Law and Justice (PiS), said at today’s press conference that he had submitted two interpellations to find out how many crimes in Poland are committed by foreigners.
“Of course, any of us may suspect that this number is high – it varies across different parts of the country, so in one of these interpellations I asked about my electoral district, the District Prosecutor’s Office Bydgoszcz-North. I received a reply stating that crimes are committed by foreigners at a rate of around 5%. That was the answer I received, based on the IT system used in the prosecutor’s office, the PRoxieS system. That system allows you, by selecting the relevant tabs, to determine whether a crime was committed by a Pole or by a foreigner, and what nationality that foreigner is” – he explained at the beginning. “You have to make someone look like an idiot.”
He continued: “The reply, although it did not fully meet my expectations, was provided by the deputy minister of justice, Mr Myrcha.”
It turns out things did not go so smoothly…
“Imagine my surprise when I looked at the second interpellation concerning the District Prosecutor’s Office in Pruszków, here near Warsaw. The same deputy minister, in the second interpellation, replied that the prosecutor’s office IT system cannot generate such an answer,” Kownacki said.
As the PiS MP noted: “You have to make someone look like an idiot. In one case the system generated a reply, in the other – the system supposedly cannot generate it. This is treating people like idiots and it is a failure to perform the duties of the minister of justice. Therefore, in this matter I submitted a letter to the new Speaker of the Sejm, Mr Czarzasty, asking him to take steps to force ministers to provide answers to MPs’ questions and interpellations. Opposition MPs have a different role than MPs of the governing coalition. It is an oversight function.”
“We will see whether Speaker Czarzasty rises to the occasion – whether he will be Speaker of the Sejm or merely a servant of Donald Tusk, covering up all irregularities, even ones as blatant as this,” he added.
However, that was not all. Kownacki announced another step.
“Of course, the second action we are taking in this matter is to submit a notification to the prosecutor’s office. An interpellation is a type of document that enables MPs to make decisions – how to vote, what draft laws to prepare. It is a particularly important document for every parliamentarian. Since Mr Myrcha contradicted himself in these interpellations, providing false information by claiming that the IT system cannot generate a reply, while in the other case it did generate such a reply, it means he lied and knowingly certified a falsehood in an official document. I hope the neo-prosecutor’s office will handle this matter. And if it does not, we will remember it in the future,” he said.
Alarming data
Kownacki cited the data he obtained from the District Prosecutor’s Office Bydgoszcz-North. According to the data, between 21,000 and 23,000 crimes were those in which foreigners were charged. This constitutes around 5-6 percent of crimes committed in Poland. “This is a huge number. Tens of thousands of crimes committed by people who are guests in Poland. In reality the number of these offences is much higher. Some are not detected, some are not reported, so the percentage is much greater. The statistic indicating 5-6 percent might seem not so high. But if we subtract the crimes committed by Poles but not by foreigners – for example, certain official offences – it turns out that common crimes committed by foreigners amount to around 10 percent. This is an enormous number,” he stressed.
As he added, regarding the District Prosecutor’s Office in Pruszków, as far as he has been able to determine, “in some categories of crime, more than 50 percent of offences are committed by foreigners.”
“This is the answer to the question of why Mr Myrcha did not want to provide a reply. We are talking about Pruszków, about central Warsaw. These statistics are alarming. Polish police, Polish services, and the Polish prosecutor’s office are not able to cope with prosecuting these offenders. Myrcha hid this because he was afraid that everyone would see the truth,” the PiS MP claims.