Judge Dmitri Fomin handed down the conviction on Friday for two counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder.

The former police major sparked a national media blitz last April when he walked into a Moscow supermarket around midnight and began randomly shooting people. Three people were killed and many others were injured.

CCTV footage shows the officer, clearly drunk, struggling with patrons and supermarket staff while trying to pull out his weapon. Yevsyukov admitted in court to the murder of one cashier after being shown the incident on tape, but said that he has no memory of what happened that night.

During closing arguments on Tuesday, Yevsyukov stated that “I’m not asking for a light sentence, I’m asking for fairness, if I may ask for it.”

Defense lawyer Tatyana Bushuyeva, who had argued that Yevsyukov was not in a normal state of mind and asked for the court to consider the incident “an act of hooliganism,” said that they plan to contest the ruling.

Moscow City Police Press Secretary Pyotr Biryukov admitted to RIA Novosti that they had expected a life sentence, saying it was “a deserving punishment.”

Survivors injured in the shooting, who were earlier denied compensation by the police because Yevsyukov was off-duty at the time of the incident, are already renewing their appeals.

In addition to life in punishment for the former officer, Judge Fomin issued a separate statement to Russian Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, declaring that the career politics of his agency are “unsatisfactory.”

Investigators had determined that Yevsyukov was under stress due to pressure at work prior to the incident.

Tackling Russia’s notoriously corrupt and violent police force has been a stated goal this year for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Yesterday, the president fired two deputy interior ministers and more than a dozen top law enforcement officers, and issued his second order in less than a month for drastic cuts in law enforcement personnel.

While violence and corruption on the part of the police is nothing new for most Russians, the media attention brought on by Yevsyukov’s killing spree has resulted in increased coverage and criticism of the disturbing number of incidents of brutal police criminality. As reports followed one after another of officers killing pedestrians while driving drunk, fatal beatings, and an increase in police suicides, top governmental officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved altogether.

In a recent example earlier this month, an elderly composer was severely beaten and robbed in the city of Yekaterinburg by a group of police who allegedly swore at the victim, telling him “Nurgaliyev isn’t going to help you.” Local authorities only accepted the composer’s appeal about the incident after he filed it a second time, and no criminal charges were initiated until after the story broke in the Russian media last Tuesday.

For a system of law enforcement with an already lackluster reputation, the killing spree was a low point.  But in the weeks since the shooting, a number of other high-profile crimes committed by police officers have shown that abuse of power is all too common.  While officials are pledging to drastically change the training and education program provided for officers, many remain concerned that they are doing too little.

In May alone, the number of incidents involving the Russian militsiya and other agents of the law is shocking.  On May 9th, one drunk senior lieutenant in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug opened fire on a children’s playground and assaulted a young girl.  Allegedly, he was angered by the fact that she was singing a pop song in English during the Victory Day holiday.  On May 1st, an officer in the Samara oblast shot and injured his wife, before taking his own life after the two had an argument.

There have also been three driving accidents where officers killed or injured pedestrians with their service automobiles.  Another officer, drunk and high on drugs, caused a high-speed chase through Moscow after he refused to stop for an inspection. A fifth accident was caused by a drunk fire-fighter in the Arkhangelsk oblast, who hit two schoolgirls, one of whom died instantly, before he tried to flee the scene.

An officer in St. Petersburg has meanwhile been accused in a series of sexual assaults against teenage boys.  Another St. Petersburg officer from the Russian anti-narcotics service was arrested in something that reads like a Hollywood script.  A statement from the agency said the agent would confiscate drugs and money from trafficking suspects, then forcing them to work for him as drug-dealers.

Finally, an arms trafficker was arrested in Moscow for attempting to sell two handguns to undercover agents.  It turns out the dealer used to work as a deputy police chief in the same office as Denis Yevsyukov.  Investigators have denied a connection between the two.

As result of Yevsyukov’s killing spree, a number of high-placed officers have resigned from the Moscow police force.

Mikhail Sukhodolsky, the deputy minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, admitted on May 14th there was a problem and pledged to reform the agency’s training program.

“Today we are forced to admit that the training provided to militsiya officers leaves much to be desired,” he told the Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an interview to be published Thursday.  “Which is to say that people may not be prepared, both professionally and psychologically, for their mission of defending people.”

Human rights leader Lev Ponomarev, meanwhile, released a statement on May 14th expressing that in its current form, the militsiya had become a threat to society.  To solve this problem, Ponomarev said the whole system must be changed.

Lev Levinson, an expert from the Institute for Human Rights, agreed.  Reforming the professional training was a necessary step, he told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper.  Yet changes would be useless if the system of accountability remained unchanged, he said.

On May 19th, Moscow’s rights organizations are planning to stage demonstration to call for a reform of the militsiya and its abuses of power.  A corresponding permit request was filed with city officials on May 7th.