HEATS - MEANS LOVES TO HIT

POWER AND PEOPLE

There are legends about how to obtain the necessary testimony. The offices of representatives of law enforcement agencies of almost all countries of the world appear in such stories in the form of torture chambers, and the law enforcement officers themselves often act as inquisitors, ...

There are legends about how to obtain the necessary testimony. The offices of representatives of law enforcement agencies of almost all countries of the world appear in such stories in the form of torture chambers, and the law enforcement officers themselves often act as inquisitors, torturing their victims worse than medieval executioners. Why is the image of a policeman in the public mind always the image of a sadist and a monster? Why is there a problem of torture and violence in law enforcement? We asked a psychologist, head of the department of psychosocial research at the Scientific Center for Mental Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Sergey Nikolaevich ENIKOLOPOV, to tell us about this.

— Sergey Nikolayevich, is the problem of torture in law enforcement agencies really a widespread phenomenon?

- Torture in the police cannot be singled out as a separate problem, because torture is a derivative of the problem of violence in general in law enforcement agencies. And this is not only a problem in our country. Violence is encountered everywhere, it exists in all countries where there is a police force - people endowed with power and weapons. This problem does not arise by chance. Its roots are in the very nature of law enforcement. These bodies are bodies of legitimate, institutionalized violence. A policeman has the right to do what an ordinary citizen does not have the right to do. He can disperse a demonstration using a water cannon and clubs, he can wring his hands and punch a rampaging hooligan in the face, neutralize a dangerous criminal. But there is a fine line between doing the job and going overboard. We do not doubt for a minute that the policeman did the right thing when he caught up and laid the robber on the asphalt, fastened his handcuffs and hit him a couple of times in the kidneys; but we feel that something is wrong when we see a non-resisting citizen being beaten during detention.

How to distinguish this line?

- In all countries, the work of the police takes place under the powerful control of the state and society. There are state control bodies - the prosecutor's office, the same is monitored by society - strong civil organizations that, only after learning or seeing the illegal actions of the police, inflate the scandal. But such a system exists only in Western countries. The problem of Russia and the CIS countries is that the function of control both on the part of the state and on the part of society has been lost. This leads to the conclusion that the increase in violence in law enforcement is associated with a lack of control and impunity.

Is it only impunity that breeds violence?

- There is still a problem of personnel. Look: who goes to work in the police?! If you come to any of our police stations, then there, even before you have time to ask a question, any police chief will begin to complain that he cannot choose and find worthy people for work, that the people who work are completely different from those whom he would like to see. The reasons for this situation are understandable - salary, unjustified risk, the wrong system for evaluating work performance. As a result, non-professionals work - and, unfortunately, not only among policemen on guard duty, but also among investigators. Everywhere skill is replaced by diligence. After all, the work of an investigator is, first of all, experience. This is the same craft as others - here you need to learn from your elders, you need to develop, you need to love your work. And in our country random people come to work in the police, who often like not work, but power as such.

- It turns out that very specific people who are prone to cruelty and aggression go to work in the police? Why is this happening?

- Where do these animals in uniform come from, you ask? It is necessary to understand the main thing: they are not animals, they are one of us. This is not a different race, not a different species, these people are from our society. And if cases of cruelty in the police are growing, it means that something is wrong with society itself. The police is an average version of what exists in society itself. When you return home and meet a small group of teenagers in knitted hats, you cringe inwardly. You are afraid because you know they can be aggressive. And then these hats are changed into caps, yesterday's schoolchildren are given weapons. Their level of aggression hasn't gone away, they've just been given a uniform. Society itself cultivates violence.

- Clarify please.

You see it every day with your own eyes. TV companies show murder movies with choking enthusiasm. Any child who returns from school can watch a blood-stained TV screen during the day and learn the technique of torture. I think it's wrong when in domestic serials they create a kind of romantic and heroic image of a bandit and at the same time show a dumb policeman-monster. Indeed, for one series about good "cops" there are ten films about sadists in uniform. Watch the daily program "Criminal Chronicle" and their shooting! As a psychologist, I say that the bad is remembered more often and better than the good. I'm all for movies like Streets of Broken Lights. It is clear that they can object to me: the created image of a policeman is fabulous. But it is necessary to create images, because reality follows the image. Do you think there were "Turgenev girls" in Rus' before Turgenev? You are wrong.

- That is, the more we show good policemen and write about good policemen, the better and kinder they will become?

- Partly so. But this will not solve the problem completely. It's too late to pour water with coffee cups on a fire that has flared up. The fact is that there is also a system that dominates the police. Guys from the street often come to serve in law enforcement agencies with a normal indicator of aggressiveness, but they are ground there. What should a trainee learn from an investigator? He must learn how to solve the case correctly, but it turns out that the trainee is only taught to increase the resolution. Here we come again to torture. Do you think they torture because they feel like it? I would like to, of course, but not so much. It's just that torture is often the only way to get a "tick" on the track record, the only way to close the case. And there is no one to teach the practice of conducting an investigation. Good interns also come to the police, but they either can't stand it and leave, or become like everyone else in order to survive.

- And yet why do they become "like everyone else"? Like who?

- I will repeat again: anger hovers in society. Just think about how a person who barely has enough salary to support his family feels when radio stations, magazines, TV programs offer to relax in Kurshaevel, buy a Toyota of the latest model? Do you think that you are the only one who reads glossy magazines with such advertisements, and the policeman only leafs through the “guard magazine”? No. A policeman is the same person, he receives the same information as we do. But, as they say, if the weapon of the proletariat is a cobblestone, then a policeman has a machine gun instead of a cobblestone. The policeman feels flawed, understood by no one and forgotten by everyone. And he starts playing. And the media only fuels his anger. I'm just sure that your today's article will be perceived by a large number of policemen as "muck and impact." And this does not at all contribute to the influx of tender and kind feelings for civilians ...