Women Rise to the Top in Albanian Police

When the Albanian police and the American program for criminal investigation, ICITAP, opened a call to train policewomen to lead criminal operations in Albania a year ago, only 16 out of the 84 who were invited to apply showed interest.

In the first months of 2015, during the first consultations, it was made clear that women who started the training should be prepared to work without fixed hours and take responsibility for big operations in the field. Eight of the others then also withdrew.

Training started in April with just eight women and on Thursday only five of them took their certificates, opening a new chapter in their professional lives.

These five in the next month will leave their old positions and start to run police stations and crime sectors - the first women in Albania trained to do so.

Lindita Nushi, who has been a member of the Albanian police for 18 years and is a specialist in tracking down fugitives from justice, is one of the five who was awarded a certificate.

She told BIRN that she always wanted to return to the field, and to have the possibility of doing so in a leadership position was a golden opportunity.

"Before I took the decision, I gathered my family to ask them if they were going to support me in this initiative. The first who said 'yes' was my husband, and this was the moment when I fell in love with him for the second time," she said.

Chief Commissioner Nushi is the mother of two small girls and joined the police in 1997, a difficult year, when Albania was being torn apart by a civil uprising and much of the territory was controlled by armed groups.

"I was near death many times at the start of my career when I held dead bodies in my hands and guns were pointed in my chest," she said.<...