Police in Russia will have the right to open cars - to fight the majors and the Maidan
The State Duma in the first reading adopted a bill that significantly expands the powers of police officers. Thus, they were allowed not to introduce themselves, not to present their official identification and not to give their rank and position if the policeman believes that the situation threatens his life and health, and immediate action is necessary to suppress the offense. In addition, security forces were able to open citizens' cars.
As a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, the last point caused the most heated discussion in the Duma.
The bill was presented in parliament by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Igor Zubov. He tried to convince the deputies that the innovations were minimal, and that the previously existing police laws were practically unchanged.
LDPR deputy Sergei Ivanov demanded an explanation.
“Why is it necessary to state paragraph 5 in the following wording: “A police officer is not responsible for harm caused to citizens and organizations when opening a vehicle...” and further in the text?
If this was the norm before, why did you write it like that? If it wasn’t there before, then there were some moments that stopped a police officer from breaking into other people’s vehicles because he knew that he would be held responsible?
And in general, tell me, don’t you see that this bill will not add more rights to you, but more headaches? Because the police officer will now have a greater sense of impunity?” – the deputy asked.
Zubov assured that the police do not require special powers for themselves - the same standards have existed for several years for employees of the Russian Guard and the FSB:
“In no case will there be a greater sense of impunity, because we have already regulated the police officers to such an extent and put them under control...
As for harm, it is true that today our citizens are becoming legally literate, the institution of the legal profession is developing, we have a really large number of appeals to the courts regarding the damage caused by police officers while carrying out legal actions. In this regard, there is a resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court, which says that if a police officer acted legally within the limits of his powers, he is not responsible for these actions. And we have written down this norm right here.
In relation to the autopsy... We inserted it there by analogy with how it is regulated for the Russian Guard, and it was adopted in the same room,” Zubov said.
Parliamentarian Tamara Pletneva doubted the need to expand the powers of police officers:
“Before, they ran to the policeman, but now they run away from the policeman. If you compare with the Russian Guard, after all, people are selected there. And the police is such a concept that people get jobs who... If you don’t like it, you can open the car, put whatever you want in there. There are so many such facts,” Pletneva said.
“Maybe there are isolated facts of this, but they are practically unknown to me. What I talked about before is a common phenomenon, especially associated with majors who do this. This is especially due to the increase in alcohol consumption, drug addiction and the like. If you think that a drug addict can lock himself in a car or drunk, and sit there, waiting for it all to resolve itself,” Zubov answered her.
Deputy Oleg Nilov, a member of A Just Russia, on the contrary, called not to intensify criticism of the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “Today we don’t feel tension about this in society, it simply doesn’t exist. But it can be inflated, as was done, for example, in the USA. I would really not like to have this kind of statement,” Nilov said.
His faction colleague Nikolai Ryzhak supported the bill and cited the example of the situation in Belarus, where, in his opinion, the actions of the security forces prevented a coup:
“Look what’s happening in our yard now. The country is burning in its outskirts. If there were no powerful military support now in Belarus, what would we have received in the west of the state? This does not mean a call to tighten it in some way and give super rights. Everything here is proportionate to all the functional responsibilities that law enforcement officers face,” says Ryzhak.
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