Police

I’ve heard a great deal about the police in Russia and their tendency to scope out “offenders” who are likely to be the biggest cash cows. The police have an incentive to do this because fines can be paid directly to the officer, so all it takes is a little forgetful paperwork and that money disappears as far as the law is concerned. In addition to this legal structure, which facilitates the padding of pockets, bribery is a common practice and few Russians express ideological reservations to feeding this corruption.
A few nights ago we went out for some wholesome entertainment at the billiards hall, and then to the bistro afterwards for a quick dinner. We left the restaurant, which is in sight of our hostel, and began to walk back. One of our comrades had an open beer that he had been drinking at the bistro and was going to finish it on the way home. Having an open container is a finable offense, and as we were crossing the street, a police van tore out of nowhere and an excited looking female officer jumped out demanding our documents.
Passports were presented and to no one’s surprise a violation was spotted. Shelli did not have her immigration card on her. The police demanded to see the sheet of paper, so Shelli’s roommate Nadya had to walk back to the hostel to find it in the room. She returned with the wrong sheet of paper, but by that time the cops had gotten bored with the foreigners and allowed us to go without checking anyone else’s documents.
The po’ were not so lenient with our beer-drinking Russian friend. First, he had to pay a fine for carrying an open container. Reasonable. But, the police then told him that he had to pay if he wanted them to keep his offense secret from the dean, so he paid them more. By the time we were leaving, he was climbing into the police van presumably to work out another deal with these corrupt police.
From what I’ve gathered, this is a typical interaction with the Russian police. I was shocked to watch a police officer accepting a bribe as if it were protocol, like asking for identification during a traffic stop. It makes you wonder how many crimes go unreported because the police are paid to forget. What is a police force that does not uphold the law? It is nothing more than a state-endorsed gang, and the police are nothing more than gangsters. I make this statement based not only on my single experience, but also from the experience of my Russian friends, as they tell me.
For example, my friend’s father died five years ago. He was found dead in his friend’s apartment, with bruises on his body. The official cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver. However, according to my friend, the police stopped investigating because the family did not have the financial means to bribe the police to do its job. Maybe there was foul play, maybe there wasn’t, but my friend will never have the consolation of knowing exactly what happened to her father because of the crooked police force.
There are many other incidents of police misconduct. Another friend was telling me about the unprovoked attacks on “black” (Central-Asian, East Asian, and African) people perpetrated by Russian nationalist groups. Videos have been uploaded to the Internet in recent years of skinhead gangs severely beating and sometimes killing innocent “blacks.” I have read that the police often look the other way and fail to adequately investigate these cold-blooded crimes, and my Russian friend confirmed this. Random attacks against minorities have subsided in the last year, but other politically motivated attacks have recently made headlines. On Nov. 7th a reporter named Oleg Kashin was nearly beaten to death by two unknown and unprovoked assailants. His jaw was shattered, leg was broken, and he suffered a head injury. Two days later, another journalist was beaten up, though not as severely. Both had been reporting on a road construction project through some of the last woodlands on the outskirts of Moscow. None of the assailants have been brought to justice.
The Russian police force is rife with corruption, and every Russian knows it, but few do anything about it. The police levy a heavy tax on Russian society when they extort money from the innocent, and ignore heinous crimes. This must change if the country ever hopes to emerge into liberalism and modernity.