Hundreds of fired police officers rallied in December against transforming Ukraine'scorrupt police force into an honest and effective law enforcement agency.
Two months later, the tide had turned, as hundreds of Kyiv residents took to the streets to support the newly-created patrol police, which replaced the post-Soviet traffic police last year.
The counter protests symbolize the ongoing battle between Ukraine’s entrenched bureaucracy and reformers seeking to expel corrupt and dishonest officers from the police system, and to attract new blood.
“We have a feudal government system, and the Interior Ministry was part of that system,” Yury Butusov, the chief editor of the censor.net news website and a member of a police vetting commission in Kyiv, told the Kyiv Post. “Everything was based on the principle of personal loyalty. Now we’re getting away from this.”
Civic activists interviewed by the Kyiv Post were mostly positive about the ongoing vetting process for the police, which is supposed to cleanse the system. However, they also described attempts to sabotage the process. The vetting process has also revealed police officers’ involvement in bribery, torture and other crimes.
This time, reform is serious
“We have managed to remove many redundant officers whose reputation was a burden for the police,” Butusov said.
Serhiy Pernykoza, another vetting commission member in Kyiv, told the Kyiv Post that “some police officers initially thought that this (vetting process) was a fake.
”“They’ve gone through similar vetting commissions in the past, and they were just a formality,” Pernykoza said. “But in this case there were real dismissals and everything was serious. Some people are starting to think that changes really will happen.”
The vetting commissions comprise two representatives of the National Police, one representative of the Interior Ministry, and three members from civil society.
Commissions decide whether to fire, demote or promote an individual or keep them in their jobs. Before coming to an interview, a police officer has to pass two tests – a general one (logic and math), and a legal one.
The maximum score is 60 points, while the lowest score allowed for an officer to pass through the vetting stage is 25. Questions asked during interviews cover knowledge of the law, police officers’ property, their career structure, and promotions.
Commissions also conduct background checks on certain applicants, examining their social media posts and reports about them in the media.
The main criteria for vetting are sincerity, honesty, understanding of the essence of police reform and the readiness for change, Yevhenia Zakrevska, a lawyer for murdered EuroMaidan protesters and a vetting commission member, told the Kyiv Post.
“People who are not qualified professionally, don’t fit their job and don’t understand their professional duties should not work in law enforcement,” Butusov said. “They should seek employment elsewhere.”
Police a burden on society
The vetting process revealed that the current system is so rotten that it is almost impossible to eliminate corruption.
Some traffic police officers said they had had to take bribes because the government had failed to provide gasoline or other work-related supplies to them, Pernykoza said.
Other police officers admitted that they were forced to pass bribes up to higher-ranking officers.
“I got the impression that the work of the police hindered society, instead of helping it,” Pernykoza said. “5 to 7 percent were honest cops, who caught criminals and protected people, but the rest were up to God knows what.”
Many police officers were running protection rackets for car hijackers, criminal gangs and brothels, he said. Officers who claimed to have never taken bribes were asked to undergo a lie-detector test. During the tests, some officers confessed to crimes such as drug trafficking, torturing people, opening and closing criminal cases for money, and illegally storing and selling weapons, according to Roman Sinitsyn, a member of a Kyiv vetting commission and a volunteer helping the military.
A lack of individual responsibility and the police’s military style structure was also revealed. Some police officers were asked what they would do if they saw their bosses taking bribes, Pernykoza said. Many replied that they would report this to higher-ranking officers, but did not know what to do if these officers covered up for their bosses’ crimes. Commission members reported the evidence of crimes they uncovered during the vetting process to the law enforcement authorities.
Unpunished for EuroMaidan crimes
The vetting process was tested when several former officers of the Berkut, a riot police unit heavily involved in brutal crackdowns on EuroMaidan demonstrators in 2013-2014, successfully won back jobs in the police in Kyiv in December.
The incident sparked a scandal, and eventually the vetted Berkut officers were not allowed to remain in the police.
While the Berkut was dissolved in February 2014, many of its officers were transferred to other police units instead of being fired. Butusov and Zakrevska said the vetting commissions’ initial failure to fire the former Berkut officers was due to their being over compassionate.
Meanwhile, Alexandra Drik, head of the Civic Lustration Committee, told the Kyiv Post by phone that many police officers in Kyiv were avoiding lustration – the dismissal of officials linked to ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime – by obtaining war veteran cards. She said that 33 out of Kyiv’s 78 top police officers subject to lustration had gotten hold of such cards, though it is not clear if they had actually participated in the war.
The Interior Ministry told the Kyiv Post in a written reply that 597 employees of the ministry could be subject to lustration for prosecuting EuroMaidan demonstrators but failed to specify how many of them had been dismissed.Police officers are also sabotaging vetting by obtaining transfers to other regions, or to the State Guards Service, which provides security guards for government agencies, or to the Interior Ministry’s volunteer battalions, Zakrevska and Sinitsyn said. The State Guards Service and volunteer units are exempt from vetting.
Just the beginning
In Kyiv, 13 percent of all police officers, 70 percent of mid-level police officers and 80 percent of top police officials were fired as a result of vetting.
Thanks to the vetting commissions’ work in Kyiv, corrupt officials who were controlling corrupt cash flows and who were paid for conducting criminal investigations have been fired, Butusov said.
But the plan underpinning the vetting process, which was approved before Khatia Dekanoidze was appointed as chief of the National Police in November, was criticized by some commission members.
Instead of automatically transferring police officers to the newly-created National Police, the Interior Ministry should have dismissed all of the officers, and then vetted them for the new police force, Zakrevska said.
The current reform format makes it harder to fire police officers and creates the risk that the courts might reinstate them, she said.
And Butusov said that many more than 13 or 15 percent of the police’s employees had to be fired to create a well-functioning police force.
He admitted, however, that it would be very difficult to do that quickly.
“In a country without (natural) resources, with a population of 40 million people, it’s impossible to carry out such fast reforms, Butusov said.
In contrast with patrol police, it is hard to replace investigators, as it would take much more time to train them, he argued.
Both Butusov and Zakrevska said that the current police vetting should be just the beginning of reform, and be considered as a transition period.
“Vetting is just the beginning of the process, and a small step,” Zakrevska said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected], while Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliana Romanyshyn can be reached at [email protected]. Kyiv Post intern Yana Stepaniuk can be reached at [email protected]
