Russia's police turn to crime

OFF THE WIRE
Nicolas Miletitch
WAtoday.com.au
AFP
Scandals involving police crime are becoming more and more frequent in Russia - kidnapping, murder, torture and corruption among them - casting doubts on President Dmitry Medvedev's ability to reform the tainted force.
In the latest incident, four Moscow policemen were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping a businessman and driving off with him in the trunk of their car.
The man's wife told police that her husband had been kidnapped from outside their house by camouflaged attackers.
Advertisement: Story continues below The case was not unprecedented: three Moscow police officers had kidnapped two women in February, demanding 50,000 euros ($A71,022.73) and threatening that the families would be framed in drugs cases if they failed to pay up.
Police often use heavy-handed tactics and are swift to pull the trigger. In January, a journalist was beaten to death by a policeman in Omsk, while in Moscow a lieutenant-colonel fired a fatal shot at the driver of a snow plough that had grazed his car.
A month earlier, an investigator in Siberia shot a suspect during questioning.
In the most shocking case, Moscow police major Denis Yevsyukov was convicted in February of two counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder after he walked into a supermarket and randomly shot at staff and customers.
Yevsyukov committed the crime while off duty, but still wearing his police uniform jacket. He killed a cashier and injured seven others in the supermarket, after shooting the taxi driver who drove him there.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg regularly condemns Russia for police torture and draws attention to the slow investigations, the tardy opening of criminal cases and the mild sentences handed out to offenders, leading to a feeling of impunity among police officers.
In the latest example of such kid glove treatment, two St Petersburg policemen investigating the theft of a moped tried to extract confessions from two teenagers by burning their genitals with cigarettes and suffocating them with plastic bags.
The two men were sentenced in July to three years in prison each, with one receiving a suspended sentence.
In the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that 67 per cent of Russians say they fear the police, according to a survey carried out by Levada independent polling centre.
The most high-profile cases led to the sackings of senior police officials and the Kremlin has called for reforms in an attempt to curb police crime, particularly the force's all-pervasive corruption.
According to a report by the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, a police officer who specialises in organised crime and protects a criminal operation can earn as much as $US20,000 ($A22,422.78) a month.
Even a rank-and-file traffic policeman pockets an average of $US5000 ($A5,605.7) a month in backhanders.
Some earn far more. Captain Arkady Kirsanov from the southern Astrakhan region, who was arrested in February, was earning more than $US10,000 a month by extorting money from drivers, along with 13 other members of his unit, investigators said.
Out of the 5000 crimes committed by police in 2009 (up 11 per cent on 2008), more than 3000 were linked to corruption and abuse of power, according to official statistics.
Two policemen in recent months have taken the risk of publicly exposing their colleagues' ill-doing in whistle-blowing videos.
The first, Alexei Dymovsky, a police major from the southern city of Novorossiisk, was fired after he posted a video on YouTube alleging chronic corruption in his force.
He was later detained for 1 1/2 months and convicted of slander over the video, in which he issued a litany of complaints about the conditions of work and said officers were treated "like cattle".
Another police major, Mikhail Yevseyev, was arrested last week on numerous charges after he made a video accusing police of fabricating evidence that led to the conviction of two innocent people.