Before participating in this event I really didn’t know a
lot about police work, I have known a couple of police officers, but my
interactions with the police (in most places) had been on a very basic level of
citizen speaking to public servant who has a tough job to do and
responsibilities I respect.
Of course, the situation is quite different if we are
speaking about the old Ukrainian police. Many expats in Kyiv learned to carry
their passports at all times after having a cop extract some hryvnias from them
as an easier option than the three days in prison being offered. Almost
everyone who has ever driven a motor vehicle on Ukrainian roads is familiar
with being pulled over (with or without reason) and then going through the most
blatant bribe demands it is possible to get from a man (they almost all were
men) in uniform. I remember once insisting on a ticket for an illegal left turn
at a traffic light on a quiet Sunday afternoon. After an unnecessary half-hour delay the cop gave me the forms to sign, suggested with a wink that there
was actually no need to be so formal, and then made a confused gesture to his
partner when I signed and took the ticket off him.
That was the reality, we all know it. In the run-up to the
revolution a group called “road control” started putting together and sharing
dash cam and mobile phone evidence of this behavior. Anybody who tries to
suggest that nothing has changed in Ukraine still can take a look through their
videos, still available on YouTube, and reflect on that.
The idea of the conference, organized as part of a project
funded by the Canadian government (thanks!) was to bring over Canadian police
officers (most were Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and get them in a room with the heads and deputy
heads of the cities where the new patrol police have started operations. There
are 10 to date. As well as the top dogs, there were also battalion commanders,
the heads of monitoring and legal departments, and even the top shrink too who
made up the 50 attendees over two one week courses. Among the course attendees
were a couple of members of the old guard, people who have passed through the
process of “attestation” and been permitted to retain their old positions after
being judged to have been some of the only decent cops in the previous system.
My first face to face contact with the Canadian trainers and
mentors happened over a weekend, a long briefing session followed by a cold
excursion through Kyiv. I was struck by how much these men and women cared, I
learned that Canada has a long and very successful track record in training
cops in countries going through some kind of transition. The room was filled
with tough people who had a combined 500 years of policing experience and with
service under their belt in places as far apart as Afghanistan, Bosnia,
Northern Ireland and Jamaica. More than that, the room was filled with a
passion for this project. That passion from the advisors grew throughout as
they came to understand and appreciate just who they were working with and how
hard these people had fought their multiple battles over the last two years.
It is evident that growing out of the initial project that
was launched just one year ago as the patrol police there is already a very
clear foundation for the National Police Force of Ukraine. What had started
with a plan to have a new police force patrolling the streets of the five biggest
cities in Ukraine has already surpassed that goal twice over, and by the summer
of 2016 there are scheduled to be patrol police operations in 31 cities
throughout the country. The success of the implementation progress to date is
already astonishing, but the continuing momentum that is being harnessed is
a constantly evolving success story for Ukraine, and friends of Ukraine, to be
proud of.
It’s impossible to paint a picture of an average leader in
Ukraine’s new police structure, the men and women who have participated in and
been selected to lead this process are from varied backgrounds, many of them
are young. Many of them are absolutely new to law enforcement. A lot of them
have experienced war first hand when they have defended their country and
liberated parts of their land and hundreds of thousands of their country folk.
Almost all of them participated in the events that led to Yanukovych abandoning
his office. Many of them have been moved from one city in Ukraine to another as
has been required with the fast pace of events and none of them have complained
at this.
A commander from Lviv has moved back to take command in
Kyiv. A native of Donetsk is a deputy commander in Lviv. At the end of week
two, with his graduation certificate in his hands one of the mildest but
smartest men on the course went to take up his post as deputy commander of the
Ivano Frankivsk force that opened the following day. The head of Dnipropetrovsk
may be one of the oldest Commanders, a man who commands respect and has mine,
he has seen service in various cities, including in Mariupol.
One of the key aspects to the Leadership Training Course was
how skillfully the course leaders managed to give participants the tools to
find solutions, rather than simply give them the “right” answer to write in a
notebook and learn to regurgitate at a later (test) date. This learning style
allowed for some incredible class-wide debate and discussion and on more than
one occasion the set finish time for the day came and went as the course
participants argued their opinions passionately and eloquently.
This mentoring didn’t finish in Kyiv, after the first week
here trainers headed out to the regions to observe the day to day operations
and understand the peculiarities of policing in different parts of a country as
richly diverse as Ukraine. The job won’t stop here either, with 21 more cities
set to go live in the next 6 months there is a great deal of work ahead of us.
But, with absolute confidence inspired by these last few
weeks, I can say that reforms are working, Ukraine is changing, these brilliant
and determined people are overlooking the problems (they exist, uniforms for example)
and working to keep people safe. In a touching moment at the closing session of
week two every single man and woman addressed the room as they were presented
with their certificates and proudly stated “I serve the people of Ukraine” and
this understanding of their roles represents a fundamental difference in
attitudes of law enforcement in Ukraine.
The new patrol police set the standards for how all civil
servants must act towards the citizens of their country.
