We have been witnessing an unusual trend in recent months. Cops are becoming braver and more public in voicing complaints against their superiors.
The pioneer in this field is former police Major Alexei Dymovsky. Anastasia Panayotova, a 58-year-old resident of Novorossiisk, claimed Dymovsky beat her son to death. According to police investigators, Dymovsky stole $900 in government funds. According to his superiors, Dymovsky spent 10 months last year on sick leave. According to the doctors from whom Dymovsky requested permission for sick leave, he ran from floor to floor yelling, “I have a gun!”
This is the man who posted his Urbi et Orbi about police corruption on YouTube. He also offered to fight police corruption on a nationwide basis if Prime Minister Vladimir Putin named him head of the operation. The public showed great interest and support for Dymovsky’s denouncement of police wrongdoings. ?
Then there were the Moscow OMON riot police who vented their complaints of abuse in the ranks in the Feb. 1 issue of The New Times magazine. Their appeal made a more favorable impression. In contrast to Dymovsky, the Moscow OMON not only called attention to the misdeeds of their superiors, but also mentioned violations they had committed themselves. They told of how humanitarian aid packages that they sent to Chechnya ended up for sale on the marketplace.
In addition, Moscow traffic police are under investigation for having used motorists and their vehicles as “human shields” to apprehend a suspected thief traveling along the Moscow Ring Road — using them as a human shield in exactly the same way that terrorists use hostages. The officers tried to justify their actions by complaining how their superiors extort money from them and how difficult their lives are in general.
Yes, the traffic police do have tough lives — not unlike prostitutes. Indeed, the two professions have a lot in common. Both stand by the side of the road and try to get what they can from passing motorists. Prostitutes pay off their pimps, and the traffic police pay off their superiors. But if the traffic police appealed to the people to receive the right to extort money from motorists without having to pay a fat percentage to their bosses, this would probably not garner a lot of public support. Yes, the traffic bosses do treat their subordinates like dirt, but nobody is forcing traffic police to take these jobs.
This spate of public accusations and counter-accusations has revealed how rank-and-file police officers feel toward their bosses. It turns out that they hate them. They consider it unfair that their bosses are earning millions of rubles from extortion when they can only pocket $50 or so on a good day. Traffic cops become livid when they see their parasitic superiors living high on the hog when it is the cops on the street who do all the hard work extorting money from citizens.
People often compare Russian cops to the mafia, but I disagree. The typical mafia thug on the street idolizes and blindly serves his mafia don. But Russia’s cops hate their commanders. That is the only difference between the two.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.