Russia: Every fifth police officer guilty of criminal behavior

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Pakhi Hussain

28 June, 2011

Russian police is in for a tough time as they are about to face some strong measures brought about by the Ministry of police reforms. Hope every country takes a leaf out of their book and starts taking measures against corrupt police officers.

THE MINISTRY'S police reform of Russia is bringing in some changes to their system as they are working on the tipoff that around 50,000 incidents of criminal behaviour with 2,000 crimes have taken place in the police force since the start of the year. In order to bring everyone to the right track new and innovative measures are being used and one of those methods is polygraph test and anyone who is not comfortable with the idea or denies it would face the possibility of being benched.

Everyone in the police department will have to go through the polygraph test and answer questions regarding the same. Talking about what would happen if a person refuses to take the test, Lt. Gen. Yury Draguntsov, head of the ministry's internal affairs division says, “The polygraph testing is a voluntary thing, and the candidate has the right to refuse, but a refusal can raise questions from the members of the certifying committee and be an indirect reason of the refusal to be hired in the police force.”

Apart from the polygraph test the name of the force, which was’ militia’ would also be changed to the universally accepted ‘police.’ Adding another measure to the cleansing process of the police force, around 20 per cent of the officials would be sacked and the ones without any blemish or least blemish would have their salaries increased so that they do not turn to criminal behaviour for want of money.

Lt. Gen. Yury Draguntsov said that every fifth officer can be sacked on behavioural issues. He also added, “'According to preliminary results, at least 15-20 per cent of the police heads may fail the certification and be expelled from the police force.”

Thus, the police officers who thought since they were on the right side could get away with any kind of behaviour are in for a tough time. It is time that they get their acts together.