“There, behind my back, in the past, remains bribery, abuse of authority, corruption and all that is negative – today there is none of that,” he announced during a meeting with Kostroma city police.

A ministry-administered “reassessment” of Russia’s police officers was carried out across the country on August 1, during which “issues of questionable declarations of income, real estate and financial transactions came to light,” Nurgaliyev explained.

Of the more than 875 thousand officers who underwent the reassessment, about 183 thousand were fired.

According to the minister, “only the best of the best remain in the new structure.”

Worth noting is that Vice Minister of Internal Affairs Sergei Gerasimov admitted on August 2 that there had been incidents of corruption during the reassessment procedures, albeit “minimal” ones.

The new federal law “On the Police,” Which went into effect March 1, renames Russia’s police forces from the “militsiya” to the “politsiya” and tightens control over how they operate. Part of the reforms involves cutting 22% of the force by 2012 down to 1,106,472.

Until now, public anger against the Russian police has manifested itself largely through public protests and online videos. But on May 27, a group dubbed by the Russian media as the “Primorskie Partisans” began a series of physical attacks on police officers. The group, whose name derives from the guerilla Soviet Partisans in World War II, reportedly distributed leaflets prior to the attacks calling for corrupt officials in the Russian Internal Ministry to be removed from their posts. According to an Ekho Moskvy poll, a majority of Russians are hailing the Partisans as “Robin Hoods.”

On Thursday, the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid newspaper published a report, not officially verified, that police have been given an order to catch the Primorskie Partisans by June 12 – the Russia Day national holiday. On that day, says the paper, the group has supposedly promised to stage several attacks in large Russian cities. They also note that police have located several weapons caches that presumably belong to the Partisans, one of which included a sawed-off shotgun, grenades, ammunition, bulletproof armor, and a motor boat.

The group’s alleged manifesto, which seems to only have been posted online in the last few days, is signed by the group’s self-identified leader, 32-year-old Chechen War veteran Roman Muromtsev. It charges that there is a “global, behind-the-scenes” entity that is “creating terror on our land,” and say that the Primorskie Partisans are “not criminals and not murderers,” but “have taken up the battle against evil.”

It also, however, says that it has taken up the battle “against Jewish fascism, as our glorious grandfathers and fathers took it up in 1941 against the German invaders,” and reports indicate that the group has ties to nationalist and far-right organizations.

At the same time, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General of Russia said on Thursday that Muromtsev was not a member of the Primorskie Partisans. Therefore, whether or not the manifesto actually represents the group’s views is unclear.

The AFP provides a detailed account of the story:

Russia on Thursday captured one of a gang of anti-police youths whose deadly attacks on the security forces in its Far East Region have gripped the public imagination, investigators said.

The authorities have launched a massive manhunt for the gang, accused of killing one police official and wounding three in a series of brutal attacks in the far-flung region bordering China using knives and automatic weapons.

But in a country where the police are deeply unloved, they have still been dubbed by the media as “Robin Hoods”, after the medieval outlaw of English folklore who robbed the rich and gave to the poor.

Over 71% of callers to the Echo of Moscow radio said the attackers were “Robin Hoods” compared to 29% who called them mere bandits, during a phone-in on Wednesday.

“As part of a special operation, police on June 10 detained a member of a criminal gang, suspected of attacking police,” investigators said in a statement.

The gang of at least five men is suspected of three attacks on police, apparently motivated by a grudge against the force.

More than 150 police officials have been deployed in the manhunt in the Far Eastern Primorye region, a local security services source told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Russian television showed helicopters searching the forested region, while police in flak jackets set up road blocks to check cars.

Third attack

In a first attack on May 27, a police official was stabbed to death while on night duty. The attackers then ransacked the rural police station, stealing handcuffs and uniforms.

In the latest attack on Tuesday, the gang fired at two traffic police officials, wounding them. The attackers wore camouflage and wielded automatic weapons, according to Russian media.

The gang is also linked to third attack on a police car on May 29 that left one officer with gun shot wounds to his face.

Several of the gang have military training and one served in Chechnya, sources in the security services were cited by RIA Novosti as saying.

The public support for the gang underlines what critics say is near-daily abuse of office by the police forces, whose officers are regularly accused of violent crime and bribe-taking.

In November, the country’s interior minister even stressed members of the public had the right to use self-defence against abusive police officers.

The father of one of the suspects blamed “the lawlessness of the Russian police” for the attacks, saying his 18-year-old son Roman has been severely beaten by police officers before he fled home.

Suffered

“They are all boys who have suffered at the hands of the police,” Vladimir Savchenko said on Wednesday in a radio interview with the Russian News Service.

He named the police service of the Kirov district.

Media speculated over the reasons for the attacks.

Anonymous letters were sent in April to police, prosecutors, courts and some political parties in the region demanding that top police officials be fired and threatening a “partisan war,” Kommersant reported.

The gang members also appeared to have links to nationalist groups and messages of support for their attacks appeared on far-right web sites. One of the suspects Alexander Sladkikh, 20, is known to be interested in Nazi ideology, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported, citing a local police official.

Two other suspects had been detained by police for beating up foreigners, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported.

– AFP

Authorities in Chelyabinsk are filing a criminal suit against police lieutenant Vitaly Yuzynchuk for hitting and killing a pedestrian, whose body he proceeded to bury on the spot. Investigators say that late on the night of April 6, Officer Yuzynchuk was driving his Honda when he hit a 38-year-old Chelyabinsk resident. The victim died at the scene, and the officer decided to cover up the crime by burying the dead body.

However, criminal investigators uncovered the body after several days, and were able to identify the vehicle involved in the accident. Upon learning that he had been found out, Yuzynchuk filed a confession and stressed that “the pedestrian had crossed into closely oncoming traffic.”

According to local media, two of Yuzynchuk’s fellow officers were with him in the car at the time of the accident. All three are presumed to have been drunk. It was unclear whether the passengers currently face any charges, and in fact, Yuzynchuk himself is only being charged with negligent homicide by improper use of a vehicle – not for hiding the body. He faces a maximum term of five years in prison.

Yuzynchuk’s colleagues, including those who uncovered the crime, have come out in strong support of their colleague. A statement to Gazeta.ru from one regional police department read: “Once again you want to write filth about police officers; no comment.” Yuzynchuk was characterized positively in his own department. “We can’t say anything bad about him as either a police officer or a person,” said one officer. “Nothing reprehensible was ever noticed before. There were never any problems with him at work or on a personal level; he never caused any concerns.”

As Gazeta.ru points out, this is not the first time a police officer has been caught shirking responsibility from a traffic accident. In the Vladimir region last August, Officer Yevgeny Spitsyn hit a bicyclist from behind while off-duty; he stopped his car and, failing to check if the woman was still alive, dragged her into a nearby ditch. He then covered the body with branches and left the scene. After the body was discovered, Spitsyn played an active role in the criminal investigation, including by questioning witnesses. In another incident last November in Krasnodarsky Krai, officer Sergei Afanasyev, in uniform, drunkenly lost control of his vehicle and rammed a bus stop, injuring a pensioner and her granddaughter. The officer took them to a regional hospital and falsified their medical documents, saying that the injuries were sustained when the two women simultaneously fell into a basement. The grandmother later filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office explaining what had actually happened, and a suit was filed against Afanasyev. His trial has yet to begin.

Dymovsky is notably more heated in this latest video than the original clips he posted online last year – not surprising, considering that those videos resulted in him being promptly fired from the Novorossiysk police department and forced to flee to Moscow, where he was then arrested and charged with laundering money from the police department’s operational budget. Those charges, which Dymovsky and his supporters maintained were ridiculous and obviously politically motivated, were finally dropped earlier this month.

“You know, from the moment that my first video address was released, already five months have passed,” says the ex-major, addressing President Medvedev. “I think that in that time you could have paid some kind of attention.” But indeed, the Russian president has not once publicly acknowledged the existence of either Dymovsky, his videos, or his allegations. And they certainly would have been hard to miss: Dymovsky’s press conference when he first arrived in Moscow was packed beyond capacity, as few sectors of Russian society disagree on the need for drastic reform of the police. But while Medvedev has made several proposals in the past few months to that end, experts question their efficacy and positive results have yet to be seen.

Dymovsky goes on in his video to accuse the president of “jumping around abroad” and ignoring problems in his own country, before launching into a tirade against a swath of high-ranking government officials, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, for spending their time fighting over money to buy up Pacific islands and “wiping their feet on the Russian people.” Appealing to Medvedev “as a man,” the ex-major asks Medvedev to bring criminal charges against Putin for a number of national tragedies in which, according to Dymovsky, the prime minister has direct responsibility. Evoking such incidents as the Nord-Ost theater siege in 2002, the Beslan school massacre in 2004, and the Moscow metro bombings just last month, the ex-major insists that “for every drop of blood spilled, someone should be punished.” Russians, he says, want to live in a country that is safe for themselves and their children.

Since Dymovsky posted his first video exposés last November, police officers from all over Russia have come forward with similar videos and accusations of institutionalized corruption throughout the ranks of the Russian police. The wave of videos reflects a recent trend in which ordinary Russian citizens, feeling that their grievances will go unheeded by government institutions, post videos online detailing police abuses of authority. Some of the clips, such as a recent one in which a man details how he was used by traffic police as a human shield in a hunt for armed robbers, have gone viral and sparked outrage in many Russians.

In his closing remarks, Dymovsky gives the president a deadline to rectify such problems or face an angry rally on Red Square. “Nobody will forgive you for what’s happening in Russia today,” says the former officer. “Remember every mother’s teardrop, remember every baby’s teardrop, starting from 1917. The Russian people remember it. So that said, I advise you to establish order by November 12, 2010, or to step down together with your cabinet. How many more facts do you need, how many more videos do you need about the fact that lawlessness is stirring in Russia? That a genocide of the Russian people is being committed?”

If Dymovsky does follow through with his plan to stage a massive demonstration – especially on as high-profile a place as Red Square – he will be faced by the same basic organizational problem faced by Russia’s entire political opposition: according to the Rosbalt newspaper, Dymovsky says that journalists have been prohibited from writing about him altogether. It was this media blockade that forced him to film another internet video instead of holding a press conference, he says.

But Dymovsky is a man who has voluntarily given up his career, risked his own and his families lives, been forced out of his home, been charged with a variety of nonexistent crimes, and been sent without proper clothing in the middle of winter to sit in a criminal investigative detention center for more than two months – and he still isn’t backing down. The resolve in Dymovsky’s voice as he issues his final line to Medvedev is undeniable: “Remember who you are, and who we are.”

Dymovsky’s video in Russian can be viewed by clicking here.

The current law, titled “On the Police,” dates back to 1991, when “there was a different state, a different time, and different responsibilities,” Nurgaliyev said in his address. “And any law should correspond with current realities.”

The minister gave the infamous Russian tradition of “identity checks” as an example of an outdated protocol – to an extent. “In accordance with ‘On the Police,’ if a person is outside without identification documents, a police officer has to bring him to the station to establish his identity,” Nurgaliyev said. “But now that’s entirely unnecessary – the patrol cars have computers, and officers on foot have hand-held devices, so they can use our information database to establish the identity of a citizen in the course of a few minutes in that very place.”

The Internal Ministry plans to finalize a draft of the new legislation later this spring, and will then post it on the agency’s website for Russians to read and send in their own input.

“Every voice will be heard and taken into account,” the minister said.

Nurgaliyev stressed the importance of improving the relationship between Russia’s civilians and the police. “A person should be certain that, when he comes to a local police station, that he will meet an officer who is open to communication, who is considerate and kind-hearted,” he said.

Additionally, Interfax reported on Wednesday that plans had been posted on the agency’s website for a regulation that would require all civilian, military, and law enforcement personnel in the Internal Ministry to inform their supervisors of any possible instances of corruption among their colleagues.

Notorious levels of brutality and corruption have stained Russia’s police forces for years, but media coverage of such incidents exploded after a lethal shooting spree by a drunken police major in a Moscow supermarket last April. Since then, the need for drastic police reform has figured among the most agreed upon topics by Russian politicians, the media, and the public alike, and President Dmitri Medvedev has made a number of proposals to that end in the past several months.

On Tuesday, the day before Nurgaliyev’s radio address, reports surfaced that the minister had been given nine months to fix the dire situation in his agency or face being fired. According to the newspaper’s source in the central apparatus of the Internal Ministry, whether or not his initiatives were successful would be judged by the number of criminal suits filed against the police, monitoring by the media, and reports by human rights and other public organizations.

The news broke Tuesday morning when the Russian media picked up on a YouTube video posted by Moscow resident Stanislav Sutyagin, who detailed what happened in the incident.

“On March 5, an acquaintance and I were driving in a Mercedes on the MKAD,” says Sutyagin. “Before reaching Yaroslavskoye Highway, we saw several highway patrol vehicles that were stopping everybody. At the moment I was in the leftmost lane, and when we were signaled to stop.”

“They asked me to turn the car a bit sideways, and naturally we did so,” Sutyagin goes on. “Giving no further explanation, the police parked their cars behind ours, and after literally a few minutes, a silver Audi flew by and grazed my car as well as the black Volga parked next to me. After that, the police got into their cars and continued the pursuit.”

Sutyagin then explains that an officer directed him to a police outpost, where he was told that there had been a special operation to detain a number of armed and wanted criminals. Sutyagin and the other drivers, he was told, had been used as human shields in an attempt to stop their car. “I have a question for the traffic police,” said Sutyagin in his video. “What if the car had been hit differently? Either I or my acquaintance could have died, or somebody else,” he says. “And what if the criminals stopped – they easily could have begun shooting. Are our lives really worth nothing in our Russian state?”

One of the most outrageous aspects of the incident, says Sutyagin, was that a car carrying a pregnant woman about to give birth was among those used for the barricade. The car sustained light damage in the incident.

Sutyagin said that the police refused to offer compensation for damage to his car. “The most interesting thing was that they told us directly: ‘Guys, you’re not going to get any compensation – in the end, they didn’t catch the car, it got away. And we asked you to stop – so what?'”

Noting that car repairs are far more expensive than the fine for failing to stop for police, and that a human life has no price at all, Sutyagin concluded that he plans to risk the fine in future situations.

Maksim Galushko, a spokesperson for the Moscow traffic police, told Gazeta.ru that the agency had learned about the incident through the media. “We’re dealing with it,” he said. No official confirmation or denial that the highway patrol had created a human shield to stop armed criminals had been issued as of Tuesday afternoon.

Journalists were also unable to reach the highway patrol division noted by Sutyagin in his video as responsible for the incident.

Sergei Kanayev, head of the Moscow division of the Russian Federation of Automobile Owners, said that police had created a human shield in a similar incident a year and a half ago in Moscow. “Luckily, the drivers refused to stop across the road, despite threats that they were forfeiting their rights,” he said.

“I recommended at the time that those involved in the incident should complaint to the prosecutor’s office, warning that “it will happen again,'” Kanayev said. “They decided not to complain – and it happened again.”

The allegations are just the latest in a long-running slew of unsavory incidents involving the Russian police. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says that reform of the country’s notoriously corrupt law enforcement agencies is a top priority, firing dozens of police officials in the past couple of months and calling for higher wages. One thousand activists rallying for police reform in Moscow on Saturday were less than thrilled with the president’s efforts, criticizing the government for its persecution of whistleblowing cops that have attempted to expose systemic corruption.

Sutyagin’s video can be viewed in Russian by clicking here.

A press release on the website for the Krasnodarsky Krai Investigate Committee said on Sunday that Dymovsky was being released because investigators had finished looking into the allegations of fraud against him.

Dymovsky had been both fired and arrested shortly after posting two videos on YouTube in November addressed to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, detailing corruption in the Novorossiysk police department. His efforts triggered a slew of similar videos from police officers around the country. The official pretext for his arrest was a suspicion that Dymovsky appropriated 24 thousand rubles (about $800) from the Krasnodar police department, and he was placed in a local criminal investigative detention center (SIZO) on January 22. Dymovsky has categorically denied the charges, asserting that he has documents proving his innocence.

Authorities also said in late February that it was necessary to detain Dymovsky because he lacked a job and permanent residence.

“The decision to release Dymovsky from the SIZO is a good sign,” said Lev Ponomarev, prominent rights activist and head of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights. “We’re going to see to it that he remains free.”

“It would be good if the persecution of those who helped Dymovsky ended as well,” he added.

According to RIA Novy Region, Dymovsky said on Sunday evening that prison guards in the Krasnodar SIZO had illegaly detained him for five additional hours after he should have been released. “It was probably some small measure of revenge for the SIZO officers,” Dymovsky said.

In a move that was both practical and symbolic, activists had prepared 50 thousand copies of the Russian constitution to hand out to police charged with manning the event. Renowned rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who was detained in a New Year’s Eve protest despite being 82 years old, had signed each copy with the phrase “in kind remembrance.”

None of the officers present turned down their copy of the document.

A wide variety of opposition movements were represented at Saturday’s rally, and many made speeches chronicling their clashes with police violence and abuse of authority.

“I very much love the police that protect me, but I rarely see them,” said writer Viktor Shenderovich. “More often, I see the cops that beat and murder.” He stressed that the necessity for drastic police reform is a result of Russia lacking free elections, a free press, and free courts.

Referring to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s stated goal of wiping out corruption, White Ribbon movement representative Lyubov Polyakova pointed out that whistleblowing officers, such as Aleksei Dymovsky, had been poorly received when responding to the president’s call. “Look what they’ve done to them!” she said. “You don’t want to get rid of corruption; you say that we’re rocking the boat.”

“Yes, we’re rocking your rotten boat, which you, like beetles, have already completely eaten through,” Polyakova concluded.

Major Dymovsky was detained not long after posting two videos on YouTube in November that detail corruption in the Novorossiysk police department.

Sergei Davidis, coordinator of the Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners, appealed to the officers themselves. Remarking that the rally was calling for rights for the officers, he asked whether they really wanted to work for such paltry salaries and extort bribes to get by, and whether they really, after all, wanted people to hate them.

Solidarity movement member Anastasia Rybachenko stressed the importance of new methods for hiring law enforcement officers. “People who enter the police force intend to get police batons and power,” while others join simply to avoid Russia’s mandatory draft, she said. With the Internal Ministry scraping the bottom of society’s barrel and paying officers next to nothing, it follows that the resulting police force is less than ideal.

Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s federal designate on human rights issues, was noted among those present at the rally.

A resolution taken at the end of the demonstration called for the management of the Internal Ministry to be fired, that political persecution of whistleblowing officers be put to a stop, and that police force not be used in political investigations.

Two groups of counter-protesters attempted to disrupt the rally. Some cast leaflets into the crowd that were printed to look like hundred dollar bills, reading “these dollars are payment for the collapse of the police in Russia.” Members from one group were detained.

While the Russian police have long been notorious for their violent abuse of authority, they came under particularly harsh criticism after Major Denis Yevsyukov killed three and wounded dozens more in a Moscow supermarket while drunk late last April. With the renewed wave of media attention to police abuses that followed, prominent government and public officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved. Last December, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered the Ministry to be extensively reformed, and in a January 24 statement said that the number of police personnel “needs to be reduced and wages should be raised.”

In the meantime, scandalous incidents of police brutality show no signs of slowing.

Sergei Beloglazov, a 62-year old piano professor at the Ural State Conservatory, originally filed a complaint on February 2 that he had been beaten and robbed by police on February 1. According to the professor, he was on his way home from the store when he was stopped by a police officer to check his identification documents. Beloglazov did not have his passport, which Russian citizens are legally required to carry at all times. The officer demanded that he come to the police station in order to have his identity established, but the musician refused.

At that point, says Beloglazov, several officers began to beat him, saying, “Nurgaliyev isn’t going to help you, bitch,” referring to Russian Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev. “A composer,” the officers went on, “that means you’re a faggot, and we piss on people like that.”

Additionally, the police robbed Beloglazov of 2000 rubles (about $68) and he has lost feeling in his left hand, which he says may affect his ability to play the piano. Local authorities only accepted his appeal about the beating upon filing it for a second time, he says, and a criminal suit was only initiated after the story broke in the Russian media on Tuesday.

According to a press release from the Sverdlovsk regional prosecutor’s office on Wednesday, the decision to initiate charges was made only after prosecutor Yury Ponomarev personally demanded that the local police address the composer’s complaint. He had pointed out that it had been a week since Beloglazov filed the complaint. “However, as before, no proper criminal case had been initiated. And this is in spite of the presence of clear indications of criminality in the actions of the police,” says the press release.

Escorted by a local human rights representative, Beloglazov met with Sverdlovsk Regional Police Chief General Mikhail Nikitin on Tuesday evening, who privately apologized for the incident and promised not to do anything to hinder the investigation. Despite his concerns, Beloglazov says he was satisfied with the meeting and invited the general to one of his concerts.

The police officers allegedly involved in the beating are charged with exceeding their official powers with the use of violence. If convicted, they could face up to ten years in prison.

Sources in the local branch of the Russian Internal Ministry say that the officer charged with instigating the incident is Lieutenant Valery Postnikov, a canine handler. In an explanatory note, the sources say, the lieutenant claims that while he and his colleagues did participate in the incident, the musician had been drunk.

To prove their point, police officers distributed security camera footage on Wednesday from the store that Beloglazov visited prior to the beating. One clip shows a man appearing to be the composer entering the store, and the second clip shows the same figure exiting the store and taking a gulp from a bottle. “I’m not going to deny that I purchased a light beer in the store,” explained Beloglazov. “But I was not so drunk as to fall over, like the police are indicating in their explanatory notes. This doesn’t give them the right to beat me.”

The composer’s colleagues spoke out strongly in his defense. Vice Rector Yelena Fyodorovich of the Ural State Conservatory insisted that the video clips had been falsified. “Beloglazov was not examined for intoxication when he was detained. When a medical examination was done later, it showed nothing. Such actions on the part of the police are simply outrageous,” she said.

While the Russian police have long been notorious for their violent abuse of authority, they came under particularly harsh criticism after Major Denis Yevsyukov killed three and wounded several others in a Moscow supermarket while drunk late last April. With the renewed wave of media attention to police abuses that followed, prominent government and public officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved. In December, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered the Ministry to be extensively reformed, and in a January 24 statement said that the number of police personnel “needs to be reduced and wages should be raised.”

The success of such efforts remains to be seen. In a post on his blog, opposition activist Ilya Yashin described an exchange in a Moscow police station on January 31, a week after the president’s statement. Upon asking an officer why the police station’s bathroom was overflowing with garbage, Yashin was told that “if we’re being serious, it’s the fault of the Internal Ministry reforms. Did you hear that Medvedev reduced the police force by 20 percent? So all the janitors in our station have been fired. Not a single one remains.”