Deputy Minister of Citizen Protection: Police should protect themselves

However, this brought to mind what former Minister of Citizen Protection Nikos Toskas had said , that "People should pretend to slleep" when burglars enter their homes, Ms. Papakostas called on police officers to "step up their self-protection, to watch out for themselves", while at the same time she said that the government applies a doctrine of zero tolerance.

Ms. Papakostas was also asked to comment on the identification procedure on plainclothes police officers by Ruvikonas members in Zografos, and she justified them. "It is a citizen's right to ask a policeman for his ID," he said. "These (the members of Rouvikonas) thought they would be attacked by fascists, as they said, so they protected their space. There were two individuals who they thought would watching them and ask for their identity. They thought that it made them feel very special to ask for police identity, uploaded the video to social media, and that created theissue."

There was an angry response from main opposition New Democracy:

"After the incredible statements by Mrs. Katerina Papakostas, who hastened to justify not the police officers but the trouble makers that conducted an ID check, we propose that she change her title to Deputy Minister of Rouvikonas Protection."

Vassilis Dumas, chairman of the special guards union, in relation to what was said by the Deputy Minister of Citizen Protection Katerina Papakostas noted that: "Police are for preventing crime. If it they are limited to self-protection, it is better to abolish the concept of police."