Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis recently heralded the radical restructuring of the country’s security police, which he said was in desperate need of modernization to address "an explosion in violence and lawlessness" and crack down on the organized crime that fuels these scourges.

While the minister was referring at all of Greece when he called it "a police force stuck in the 1950s," he paid particular attention to the Athens headquarters.

A highly-placed police official said the minister plans to remodel the Attica headquarters along the lines of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation or Britain’s Scotland Yard, investigating serious crimes across the country. It is likely that the Greek force’s counterterrorism unit would be merged into this new reformed Attica police force, the official said.

The key focus of the new security police will be organized crime, such as the drug barons of Crete, and its connections to domestic terrorist groups, the minister said. He added that jailed convicts will also come under greater scrutiny, noting that "the root of the problem is in jails."

“Organized crime and its connections run through the entire structure of our society and threaten to blow our social stability into the air,” Mr. Chrysochoidis said, using unusually strong language.