A traffic police inspector was sentenced Tuesday to a year in a penal colony by a Moscow district court for organizing in March a “human shield” of several occupied cars he stopped to catch a thief, Interfax reported.
The improvised roadblock failed to stop the thief’s car, which rammed three vehicles and escaped. Traffic police refused to compensate the cars’ owners, but the city police chief later personally apologized to them after the story drew widespread blog coverage.
Oleg Sokolov will appeal, his lawyer said, adding that the officer had the blame shifted on him, Interfax reported. He did not specify whom Sokolov considered responsible but said the policeman’s colleagues “basically cried” in the courtroom on hearing the verdict.
(MT)
