Two police officers in the Sverdlovsk region will be fired for filming two male prisoners imitating a sex act, local police said Tuesday in the latest case of unscrupulous behavior by law enforcement.
Regional police spokesman Valery Gorelykh said in a statement on the department's website that the region's top police chief had viewed the video and ordered "immediate punishment" for those involved.
The two officers in the Urals town of Turinsk made the video on their cell phone. It showed two intoxicated male detainees imitating an unspecified sex act at a police station, the statement said.
Lieutenant Vitaly Pelevin and traffic police inspector Alexei Reshetnikov will be fired, and all of the town's top police officials face reprimands, .
It wasn't clear Tuesday whether the officers provoked the scene or acted only as cameramen. A criminal case was opened on charges of negligence and sexual abuse, carrying punishment of up to six years in prison, Interfax reported.
The incident took place June 17 but made headlines only after the police statement Tuesday.
A video from the same police station was released by a local news website featuring a group of police filming a naked prisoner with their cell phones and joking and laughing at him. The video went viral online after it was picked up by LifeNews.ru on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, police came under scrutiny after a shocking episode of? police brutality in Kazan, where a detained man was beaten and? sodomized to death with a? champagne bottle by? officers.