Ukraine’s law enforcers are out of control. They kill. They assault. They destroy property. They abuse the law, often with impunity, rather than enforce it.
Underpaid, they serve the corrupt elite rather than average citizens. The system remains rotten to the core, and seems to be getting worse recently.
The May 18 death of student Ihor Indilo, who died of a skull fracture and other blunt-force head injuries, may provide the impetus that Ukraine needs to clean up law enforcement. Indylo died in police custody, on the eve of his 20th birthday.
He died after officers arrested him and put him in a Kyiv detention cell. Police initially said he was drunk, fell and fatally injured himself. Ukraine’s ombudsman, Nina Karpacheva, calls it murder. Hopefully, an investigation will find the answers.
Meanwhile, in Kharkiv, municipal guards dressed in black on June 2 tore down a tent city of activists protesting against the construction of a road through a forested park. At least two were injured badly enough to be hospitalized. Guards destroyed cameras. On the same day, a trade union member, Maksym Abramovsky, was detained by police officers in Kyiv’s Vokzalna metro at 10:50 a.m. He called his colleague who witnessed the detention, shouting he was being beaten up.
Reports are also coming from across the country of peaceful protests being dispersed by force.
Ukraine inherited a corrupt and incompetent law enforcement system from the Soviet Union. It is not much better nearly 19 years into independence. Instead, each political leader uses the public’s police as a private security force. No wonder polls show the public is distrustful and fearful, and only 10 percent say law enforcement is fighting crime well.
President Viktor Yanukovych’s new plan for the nation says little about law enforcers. The reforms pursued by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili would be a good place to start. After taking power in 2003, the Georgian police have been transformed from bribe-taking gangsters to a respectable force.
Ukraine can start by firing many cops, tripling the salaries of honest and competent ones, equipping them with the best crime-fighting techniques and technologies and also holding them accountable. That would be a start to regaining public trust.
