Posted on 11/10/2009 12:29:23 AM PST by Schnucki
A Russian policeman has triggered a political storm by breaking a code of silence over corruption in the ranks, in videos posted on the internet.
Major Aleksei Dymovsky, a senior drugs trafficking investigator, accused corrupt police chiefs of ordering officers to jail innocent people and claimed that it was impossible to live on the official salary, £290 a month, without taking bribes.
He made an appeal to Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, to order a national inquiry into corruption, saying that he was speaking up for ordinary officers who considered dignity and honour as “words burnt into the mind”.
His courage earned him an instant dismissal from his superiors in the southern Russian city of Novorossiysk. Mr Dymovsky, whose wife is six months’ pregnant, has since hired a bodyguard, saying he feared for his family’s safety and that he was being followed.
He set out his complaints in two videos addressed to Mr Putin that have so far attracted 700,000 internet viewers. Dressed in his service uniform, Mr Dymovsky, 32, alleged that department chiefs forced officers to solve fake crimes to improve clear-up rates.
“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,” Mr Dymovsky, who has been a policeman for ten years, said.
Police in Novorossiysk said that an internal inquiry had failed to uphold the allegations. As the row grew, however, state-controlled television began broadcasting clips from the videos and Rashid Nurgaliyev, the Interior Minister, ordered an investigation into the Novorossiysk force. He told local police chiefs to suspend Mr Dymovsky, rather than dismiss him.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
‘Walking tall’! God help him.
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