The law enforcement system in Ukraine must be reformed fundamentally and the situation in the village of Vradiivka (Mykolaiv region) proves this, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has said.
“This tragedy is obviously not a result of some coincidence and it once again points us at the necessity to reform the law enforcement system fundamentally,” the premier wrote on his page on Facebook on Friday.
Azarov also promised that such reform will be implemented.
“It will be based on the improvement of professional and public control over activities of law enforcement agencies,” the premier said.
As reported, on June 26, three men pulled a 29-year-old woman into a car in the village of Vradiivka, took her to the forest near the village of Syrove, where they beat her up and raped her. The victim was hospitalized with open fractures of the skull, cut wounds to the head and face, multiple bruises and hematomas. She has had two surgeries, and her condition is regarded as serious.
The rape victim told the investigator that she was beaten and raped by two police officers – Lt. Dmytro Polischuk and Lt. Yevhen Dryzhak. A local taxi driver, Mykhailo Rabinenko, participated in the beating.
Polischuk and Rabinenko were detained on June 30. Dryzhak, according to law enforcers, has an alibi – he supposedly was on duty at the police department at the time of the crime.
The fact that the second policeman was at large triggered protests by local residents who demanded his immediate arrest. On July 1, they were storming the district police department demanding the police officers involved be prosecuted.
On July 2, Dryzhak was detained. On July 3, the court ruled to place him under two-month arrest as a pre-trial restriction measure.
The press service of the district prosecutor’s office said that four premeditated murders were committed in Vradiivka district in 2011-2013, three of them in 2011 and one in 2012. Among them is an unsolved murder of a 15-year-old girl.
Locals say that this case is not the first unresolved crime in the district. Crimes were concealed or not investigated properly in the past. The local police did not investigate them objectively, and beat out the testimony of random people to improve the crime detection rate.
