A senior provincial police officer in Russia has been sacked after he posted a video on YouTube alleging chronic corruption in his force, the Ria Novosti news agency reported on Sunday.
“A investigation into the claims stated in Mr [Alexei] Dymovsky’s message has been conducted over the past two days. These claims have not been verified,” Russian police spokesman Valery Gribakin was quoted as saying.
Gribakin had previously said an inquiry was set to begin yesterday at the request of Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev.
“A decision to discharge Mr. Dymovsky for libel and acts that stain the honor ... of the security forces has been taken,” Gribakin said.
In a highly unusual move for a member of the security forces, Dymovsky accused his superiors in the southern Russian city of Novorossiisk of treating officers “like cattle” and preordaining the results of investigations.
“I am tired of being made to uncover crimes that do not exist. I am tired of being told that these are the people who we need to go to jail,” Dymovsky said in an Internet video which has been reported throughout the Russian media.
Dressed in his police uniform, Dymovsky also asked Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the video for a “face-to-face” meeting to discuss the problems in the police force.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich, you talk about reducing corruption and that corruption should not simply be a crime but also improper. But this is not the case,” Dymovsky said.
He also issued a litany of complaints about the conditions of work, asking how it was possible to perform such a job with a pay of just 14,000 rubles (US$500) a month.
The authorities have admitted that corruption is a problem in the police force. Moscow’s police remain in shock after a police major this year opened fire on customers and staff in a supermarket, killing two.
“Alexei Dymovsky has said what almost all employees of the police force in Russia think,” the head of the Russian police officers union, Mikhail Pashkin, told the Moscow Echo radio. “The same thing is happening in Moscow.”
But the Novorossiisk police force, in an open letter to the city, said that they were “insulted to the depths of the soul” by Dymovsky’s comments, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
The head of the Novorossiisk force, Vladimir Grebenyuk, told Moscow Echo “that there cannot be confirmation of a single fact that he gives.”
Dymovsky, 32, is senior investigator with the Novorossiisk police in the department of drug-trafficking crimes. Russian media said he had been on sick leave for the last months with an arm injury.
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