Major Aleksei Dymovsky says he wore a mini-dictaphone beginning in spring 2009 to record evidence of document falsification, corruption, and other abuses by members of law enforcement in the southern city of Novorossiysk. He stated that he was ready to personally present these and other secret documents concerning the allegations to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

During the press conference, attended by a record number of journalists, the major elaborated on his claim that superior officers had forced him to illegally bring charges against an innocent person. He said that Novorossiysk Police Chief Vladimir Chernositov had a conflict with a local lieutenant colonel by the name of Slyshik, and that Dymovsky was forced to arrest Slyshik’s son for a nonexistent crime.

The major said that his actions in exposing police corruption had garnered support from officers all across Russia. He asserted that in order to begin reform of the country’s law enforcement agencies, a large-scale review that would include the participation of the public must be arranged. The main task, he said, would be to raise the prestige of police forces in the country.

Dymovsky, who had wanted to leave Novorossiysk for Moscow with his family out of concern for their safety, had initially attempted to travel to Moscow by plane. However, when he was detained en route to the airport and found that his bank accounts had been frozen, prohibiting him from buying a ticket, he decided to make the approximately one thousand mile trip by car.

In a third video posted Tuesday of a phone conversation with Police Chief Chernositov, Dymovsky asserted that “I will win” and that he was prepared to sit in jail for three years for the risk he had taken. He also promised to distribute his gathered evidence on the internet, “to show how we work.”

Major Aleksei Dymovsky was fired from the Novorossiysk police department after a two-day inquiry into claims he had made in two YouTube videos posted on November 5. The videos alleged that he and his colleagues were treated “like cattle” by their superiors, and were forced to bring charges of nonexistent crimes against people known to be innocent.

The Russian Interior Ministry accuses Dymovsky of receiving funding from abroad, which he vehemently denies, and says that he was undergoing a professional evaluation at the time he posted the videos.

In Nurgaliev’s words, incoming evidence about growing social tension will be analyzed.  If economic factors are responsible for the increase, police will inform local officials and the Government.

“If the solution to the problem lies within the jurisdiction of regional leaders, we will make them aware,” Nurgaliev said.

Preventative methods will be taken together with the relevant ministers and local agencies.  In such a way, police hope to keep rising levels of unrest under control, Nurgaliev said.

Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was in the midsts of reducing its number of troop subdivisions, scrapped the plan in February.  Gennady Gudkov, a deputy in Russia’s State Duma and the deputy chairman of the Duma Security Committee, said police were preparing for a wave of social protest in line with rising levels of unemployment.

In a related story, police in the Moscow suburbs were forming an elite brigade named “Avant-garde,” which will specialize in maintaining public order during large-scale demonstrations.  The force is prepared to deploy across the country on short notice.

As it turns out, the Russian police are creating databases used to the track the movements of law-abiding citizens.  The project is overseen by a new department for countering extremism within the Russian police, but often targeted at individuals for no reason other than their political views or activism.

Journalist Irina Borogan documents these “black lists” in the third in a series of articles documenting the government campaign to battle extremism and strengthen control over the public.  The series is a joint project between the Yezhednevny Zhurnal online newspaper and the Agentura.ru web portal, which specializes in investigating Russia’s intelligence agencies.

Previous articles have focused on the nature of the new anti-extremism department of the Russian police and have questioned why emphasis has shifted from battling organized crime to extremism.  The next article will examine electronic surveillance systems and their use to control the behavior of groups of people.

—

The Kremlin’s Anti-Crisis Package:  How and Why “Black Lists” Are Made
Irina Borogan
June 2, 2009
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

Since the spring of this year, thousands of policemen throughout the entire country have been forced to engage in the search for extremists.  It is already plain to see that there aren’t enough extremists to go around:  according to the Ministry of Internal Affair’s [MVD] Central Informational-Analytical Center (GIATs), in 2008, there were 379 people in Russia identified for committing “extremist” crimes.  For a whole Department of the MVD, which has units (the E centers) in nearly every region, this is clearly insufficient.  Which means that the number of extremists must be supplemented.  But doing this legally, through the courts, will be difficult: in the last year, the courts refused to recognize extremist motives in nearly half of all cases, and the cases fell apart.

In such a situation, the policemen will need to work on “preventing” crimes, as Minister [Rashid] Nurgaliev is constantly calling on them to do.  And this calls for different methods for the tacit surveillance of suspects: tapping telephones, opening and inspecting mail, monitoring travel within the country and outside its borders, and so forth.  But first, the circle of people suspected of extremism must be determined, designating the people whose potential crime consists of spreading radical views or simply points of view that don’t coincide with the views of authorities.

The fact that these “black” lists of citizens exist has not only been expressed by human rights activists, but by policemen themselves as they report on the work they have done.  But now one can confidently assert that there is secret surveillance and data gathering being conducted on the citizen who ended up on such a list.  And this has recently been deemed lawful.

Details that emerged in court

In April 2009, when [authorities] announced that the creation of anti-extremist units in the country was completed, a court ruled lawful the MVD’s tracking of the movements of Sergey Shimovolos, which was done on order from the local UBOP (now – the Center for Countering Extremism).  During the trial, it came to light that 3,865 Russians were under this type of surveillance in 2007.

All of these people, including Sergey Shimovolos, the chair of the Nizhny-Novgorod Human Rights Society, were put on a police list, and a so-called “watchdog surveillance” (storozhevoy kontrol).  Now, their names come up in the very same electronic card files that have data on criminals on the wanted list.

The assumption that the militsiya and FSB were creating “black lists” of political and social activists emerged several years ago.  People began to notice that not a single trip to a public function, whether a “March of Dissent” or a human rights conference, happened without problems from the police.  Moreover, people in uniform sometimes sprang up at nearly every stop along the social activist’s whole itinerary.

In May 2007, for instance, when Sergey Shimovolos was making his way from Nizhny Novgorod to Samara in order to conduct an independent investigation of restrictions put on protests during the G-8 summit, he was checked three times: in the Nizhny Novgorod and Samara Oblasts, as well as mid-trip – in the Republic of Mordovia.  Each time, an officer of the transit police asked him to explain where he was headed and what he planned to do there.  Clearly, the checks were planned and initiated, and notably in three regions at once.  But how?

“In Samara I was lucky: the policemen honestly wrote in the report, that they detained me on the grounds a telegram (teletypogram) they received, and had to question me in line with crime prevention measures for conducting protest actions,” Sergey Shimovolos told the Yezhednevny Zhurnal.  Afterward, through court, I received materials that bore witness to the fact that I was put under “watchdog surveillance” by a decision of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast UBOP [Organized Crime Unit], which allowed them to strategically monitor my movements through the ticket sales database.”

Shimovolos decided to protest his surveillance in court.  He asked the court to recognize that these measures violate a person’s rights, and to compel the MVD to destroy all records of him and all citizens who had not been deemed to be extremists by a court, but had still been entered into this database.  On April 22, 2009, the Nizhny Novgorod District Court refused the human rights activist on all counts.

What is “watchdog surveillance”

Shimovolos lost, but thanks to his lawsuit, we learned how the system of surveillance over law-abiding citizens is carried out.

Information about Shimovolos made its way into the “Rozysk-magistral” (“Wanted Line”) electronic database of the Russian Federation MVD on March 19, 2007.  The decision to include his information into the database was made by officers in the UBOP GUVD for the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, based upon strategic reasons that comprise a state secret, in the opinion of the police.  Shimovolos himself assumes this happened because he was among the organizers of a “March of Dissent” in Nizhny Novgorod.

Having put Shimovolos’s details into the “Wanted Line” database, the policemen put him on “watchdog surveillance:” one type of record that exists to track someone’s movements.

At first, the MVD’s “Wanted Line” hardware and software suite (PTK) was created to automatically assist in the search for criminals on the federal and local wanted lists.  The PTK is “linked” to the “Express” and “Magistral” databases, which constantly receive information about train and airline tickets purchased by Russians.  When a criminal buys a ticket, the information makes its way into the PTK server.  Next, this information is communicated to the local transport police (OVD), located along the itinerary of the passenger train and in airports.  The objective is clear – the arrest of the criminal.

At the same time, data about law-abiding citizens, like Shimovolos, were introduced into the PTK.  They were then put on “watchdog surveillance.”  The whole procedure is the same, except that instead of an arrest, policemen receive instructions of what kind of work they must conduct with the citizens who are not suspected of a criminal offense.*

The Yezhednevny Zhurnal received further proof of how this system works from Roman Dobrokhotov, a participant in the “For Human Rights” movement.  On May 6, 2009, Dobrokhotov came by train from Volgograd to the capital’s Paveletsky Rail Terminal, where he was detained by a policeman waiting for him by the rail car’s exit.  The UVD officer was ordered to have a preventative talk with him.  As it turned out, Dobrokhotov was arrested on the basis of an [official] message, which spelled out in black and white how the Center for Investigative Information of the Moscow UVD for Transport reported that Dobrokhotov was put on “watchdog surveillance” by the Department for Countering Extremism of the RF MVD.

As result, the efforts of at least three police units were expended to track Dobrokhotov’s route.  The activist has never been indicted on criminal charges, but has taken part in different non-systemic political movements.

New technologies

As far as one can judge from the circumstances of Dobrokhotov’s arrest, it was conducted in the old way, without the use of ultra-modern technologies that the MVD already has at its disposal.  Such as, for instance, the portable terminal of the very same “Wanted Line” PTK: externally, it resembles a smartphone, weighing less than 200 grams, but in addition to text information, it can transmit photo and video-images.  This pocket device is designed to give militsiya officers real-time access to federal and regional databases like “Wanted persons,” “Passports,” “Weapons,” “Theft,” “Automotive Transport Wanted by Interpol,” and others.

As the manufacturers report in the technical manual, this pocket terminal has access to the nearest database server in real-time over existing communication channels, which allows for the broadcast of digital information, including the use of WEB-technology.

Aside from that, practically every large rail terminal and airport in Russia, as well as a part of trains and commuter trains, are equipped with “Videolock” face recognition systems – with cameras in rail cars, waiting rooms, cash registers and on platforms.  In principle, Dobrokhotov could well have been detained with the help of such a system.  A policeman could have received his image, marked with a special symbol, on the hand-held console.

***

In such a way, the MVD Department for Countering Extremism is at present forming “black lists.”  Data is added to them on the basis of “strategic reasons,” that are not even revealed in court.  Having gotten on these lists, citizens end up under the microscope of electronic surveillance systems of travel which were created to capture actual criminals.  Furthermore, a court has found this type of actions to be absolutely legal.

* – “watchdog surveillance” is also used by the Court Bailiffs Service to search for debtors, and the FSKN [Federal Drug Control Service] to track the movements of suspected drug couriers.

translation by theotherrussia.org

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.

General Ovchinnikov defined the squads as the “organization of community activity, based on a local approach, in order to handle problems of protecting the public order in the community, in the residence, or where there is personal property.”  The self-defense groups should be created based on standard procedure for registering a noncommercial organization, Ovchinnikov said.  Local authorities must also be informed, he added.

Members of these public associations, Ovchinnikov said, would be able to resist criminals when it was necessary for self-defense, and could provide armed resistance when it was required.  Still, the deputy minister sees their main goal as promptly informing police when laws are broken.  A similar type of public vigilance was used in Moscow during a series of apartment bombings in 1999.

Draft legislation which would formalize the self-defense squads was first introduced into the State Duma in January.  The bill also proposes the creation of “people’s guards,” another type of civilian formation.  Unlike the community defense volunteer squads, people’s guards would have the additional power to safeguard public events.

Sochi – Activist hospitalized after attack

Lyudmila Shestak, a social activist in the Black Sea town of Sochi was attacked outside her home on January 28th.  Shestak, a member of the Sochi branch of the Russian Geographical Society, told the Sobkor®ru news agency that she was in the hospital with neck and head injuries, and that she had been treated for a concussion of the brain.  The activist connected her attack with an upcoming protest meeting, set to take place in the resort town January 31st.  She said her purse and belongings were not taken.

Shestak has taken an active role in defending land-owner rights and other issues surrounding the 2014 Winter Olympics, which are set to take place in Sochi.

Moscow – Officer receives anonymous threats

Sergei Mozgovoy, president of the Freedom of Conscience Institute and a captain in the Russian Naval Forces, has been receiving anonymous threats not to take part in an opposition demonstrations on January 31st.  The officer described the threats on January 30th to the Sobkor®ru news agency.

An unnamed man has called Mozgovoy for several days, warning him not to lead officers to the “March of Dissent,” cursing at him, then hanging up.  Mozgovoy speculated that the calls could be coming from local police, who had taken down names and information from officers arrested at a previous demonstration.

The Other Russia will stage a “Day of Dissent” on January 31st in Moscow.  Events will also take place in St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Orel, Tomsk, Penza, Omsk, and other cities.

In a separate case, police visited a man mistakenly arrested at an earlier “March of Dissent.”  Dmitri Myshkin, a resident of the Moscow suburb of Khimki, explained what happened to the  Sobkor®ru news agency.

Myshkin said he had never intended to protest, but was arrested on December 14th, when police were indiscriminately detaining pedestrians at a March of Dissent.  His arrest was ruled unlawful on January 16th.

Myshkin said three officers came to his door on November 30th and advised him not to take part in the Day of Dissent on January 31st.

Tyumen – Opposition activists arrested

A number of opposition activists have been arrested in the central Russian city of Tyumen ahead of protests scheduled for January 31st.  As the Kasparov.ru online newspaper reports, Andrei Kutuzov, a professor at Tyumen University and journalist Rustam Fakhretdinov are among those detained.  According to the newspaper, a total of seven people have been arrested in the city, and several have not been charged with any crime.

On Thursday morning, Kutuzov was visited by officers from an anti-extremism unit who searched his home and seized his computer.  Agents also searched the home of his parents.

Later in the day, Fakhretdinov was charged with vandalism, and his home was also searched.  Police took paints, stencils and literature, as well as painted banners with slogans calling for the defense of human rights.

Friends of the arrested men said their detention was most likely an attempt to keep them from demonstrating on January 31st.

Novosibirsk – Activists placed under administrative arrest

In the eastern Russian city of Novosibirsk, police are rounding up the organizers of a demonstration put on by the Association of Active Citizens of Russia (TIGR).  The group, first formed to bring together car lovers opposed to new import duties on foreign autos, plans to hold a rally on February 1st.  Sergei Kononov, who filed paperwork to register the protest, was arrested from his home on January 28th, and is being held under administrative detention, according to the group’s press-agency.

City officials have not sanctioned the group’s demonstration.  Organizers say they have been ignored, and have pledged to hold a protest regardless.

Aleksei Umerenko, another organizer, was arrested on January 22nd, and sentenced the next day to 10 days administrative arrest.  His charge was the same as Kononov’s: failing to pay an administrative fine by the deadline.

Another of the group’s leaders in the far-eastern city of Khabarovsk, Andrei Dudenok, was sentenced to 12 days administrative arrest for identical charges on January 22nd.

TIGR has called the arrests “political,” saying they were intended to throw their upcoming demonstrations.

Gennady Gudkov, the deputy chair of the State Duma Security Committee, told the newspaper that the effects of the crisis were constantly growing. “It could happen,” he said, “that no amount of Internal Forces will be enough.”

The main office of the Internal Forces, Russia’s equivalent of a national guard, denied that troops were being moved. Interior Ministry press-secretary Vasily Panchenkov said enough units were already in place, but added that OMON special forces could be sent in if public meetings and demonstrations turned violent.

The paper also notes an increase in suicides related to job loss and the economic crisis.

On December 24th, the Levada Center polling agency published a new opinion survey, which indicates that more than 21 million Russians were prepared to join in mass-protests. The poll asked 1600 people in 46 regions about the likelihood that demonstrations would take place near where they live, and asked whether the respondent would join in the protest. 23 percent said protests were likely, and 20 percent said they would most likely participate, a slight increase from the first half of the year.

Rozhkov, 32, was charged with beating two of six militsiya officers who came to arrest him in February. He was planning to make public certain documents apparently showing that the results of a regional referendum were falsified.

The journalist has been classified a handicapped person of the third group since having a lung removed.

According to Rozhkov’s testimony, six militsiya officers broke into the apartment of his uncle, who he was visiting, on the night of February 2nd. After assaulting both men, the officers handcuffed them and took them to the police station. The following day, a ruling was made to arrest Rozhkov for three days.

After the journalist filed a complaint of assault with the prosecutor’s office, the militsiya officers who apprehended him replied with their own complaint. During the proceedings, the court sided with the law officers. At the final hearing, Rozhkov’s attorney was relived of his post.

Rozhkov himself maintains that is was physically impossible for him to beat up two militsiya officers. The journalist now has a new attorney, who plans to appeal the ruling.

A regional court in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg has added insult to injury for a local car enthusiast and motorist rights activist. After a long and harrowing series of encounters with police, Kirill Formanchuk, better known as “Medved,” is now being fined some 50 thousand rubles (€1361 or $2113). As the Gazeta.ru online newspaper reports, he has been found guilty of assaulting a representative of the state, charges the activist completely denies.

Formanchuk, who works for the Committee to Protect the Rights of Motorists, gained local attention for his efforts to stand up to corrupt traffic police. Instead of handing over bribes, the activist recorded his interactions with the officers, posted them on the internet, and filed formal complaints. His situation gained international prominence in October 2007 after he was severely beaten in a police holding cell.

The latest accusations allegedly took place the same day that Formanchuk was attacked. On October 12, 2007, the car enthusiast was taken into a local military enlistment office on grounds of draft-dodging. There, he got into a scuffle with a military commissar when he tried to record the exchange on his mobile phone. According to Formanchuk’s version of the event, the fight was started by the commissar.

Later the same night, the activist was arrested over the fight and transferred to a police holding cell. While in custody, Formanchuk was beaten so violently that he required immediate hospitalization. He was diagnosed with severe hemorrhaging and cerebral edema, dislodged teeth and bruising of the extremities.

Formanchuk is convinced that the reason for the attack was his campaign against corruption in the local traffic police. While his attackers have not been identified as militsiya officers, officers at the police station did not interfere or heed his calls for help.

Formanchuk received the nickname of “Medved” (“Bear” in Russian), for a decorative license plate he mounted on the front of his car. The vanity place became an excuse for traffic officers to pull him over, and became a major source of trouble for the activist.

Formanchuk has pledged to appeal the latest court ruling.

Officers of the State Inspectorate For Traffic Security (STSI), which oversees Russian roads, have an abysmal public image and are notorious for rampant corruption.

The document of new rules contains a number of innovations. For instance, every STSI unit will need to create and maintain a website. On a more direct level, officers will also need to present a form of identification upon stopping motorists.

The new requirements, which could take effect as soon as this summer, would also change the procedure for how road police check drivers for intoxication. Officers will need to have two witnesses present, and will need to use breathalyzers that provide a printout of results.

In an effort to combat corruption, road police will now have the right to use video and audio recording equipment while conducting a stop. In theory, this should prevent officers from taking bribes and keep drivers from starting a provocation with the militsiya. However, using the surveillance equipment will be optional, and the officers will be able to turn their recorders off and on at will.

The protocol also provides guidelines, previously unwritten, for how officers must act in the most common types of interactions with drivers. For instance, drivers pulled over for a moving violation will often tuck money into their documents before handing them to the STSI officer. Under the new rules, the militsiya officer must now immediately return the documents and ask that the driver remove their money.

Experts, however, are skeptical that the new protocol will prove useful. According to Viktor Pokhmelkin, the chairman of the Movement of Russian Motorists, corruption would be better resolved by a federal law, and not an administrative ordinance like the new regulations. “Otherwise, this is just the imitation of a battle with corruption,” he said.

The judicial system seems to lend its weight to Pokhmelkin’s arguments. Court statistics show that law enforcement officials are rarely brought to justice for bribery and corrupt practices, even in cases that seem open and closed.

The chairman of the St. Petersburg regional branch of the Committee for the Protection of Motorist Rights, Aleksandr Kholodov, believes the new protocol is no more than a reminder for militsiya officers. He told the Sobkor®ru news agency that the document simply repeats an earlier administrative order issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA of the RF Order No. 297 from 1999), with a few additions. Kholodov added that the new document has the same content in a different form, and as result does not carry any weight for dealing with corrupt officers. “The protocol does not add any new rights and obligations,” he said. “This is a technical document; it can only establish some kind of internal rules.”

As the RBK-Daily points out, the first federal department to release an administrative order was the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (Minekonomrazvitiya), which started a sort of vogue among Russia’s administrative bodies. Now, every agency seems intent on releasing a new protocol for how its civil servants interact with citizens.

It remains to be seen whether the new rules will have any effect on corruption.