Press
MOST COPS WERE HARSH WITH PROTESTERS, BUT YOU CAN’T FIRE ALL OF THEM, MINISTER SAYS
Chisinau. Most policemen were harsh at treating the participants in the post-election events last April, but the Ministry of the Interior just cannot fire all of them because otherwise it will have no men on service, Minister of the Interior MG Victor Catan stated on the ProTV-Chisinau channel on Monday night.
He said that one of the chief problems at reveling cops, who abused force with respect to detained protesters, is that citizens are scared to come to the Ministry to demand punishment for the police brutality. Despite this, however, a whole number of high-ranked officers have already been dismissed, including e.g. the police commissar of Chisinau’s Buiucani sector. And the ongoing merit rating will sieve away other people unfit for holding posts in law enforcement structures.
“The merit rating session will be completed in February. So far, only police commissars are through with it, and concerning 19 of them the examination commission ruled that they are unfit for the posts they hold, including because they abused force on April 7 and afterwards. They have the right to challenge the commission’s conclusion”, minister Catan said.
In his words, under former minister Gheorghe Papuc, district officers used to persuade citizens to not file complaints about minor offences, such as e.g. on thefts of their cars’ side mirrors, thus underrating the statistics of such crimes.
“Now such policemen will be thoroughly revealed and punished. We are open to the press and the society. In January, for instance, the number of minor-gravity offences appeared to rise by 261% against January 2009”, said general Catan.
He requested the Audit Chamber to thoroughly check the MoI activities over last several years, and said that the Chamber has already revealed Ministry’s violations that had inflicted a 58-million-lei damage to the State Budget, for instance through selling ministry’s public property and real estate for miserable prices.
