Criminal disobedience

The head of the presidium of Officers of Russia, Anton Tsvetkov, approached Putin with a proposal to give disobedience to the legal demands of police officers the status of a criminal offense - currently, such disobedience is an administrative offense. Tsvetkov believes that those who refuse to obey the valiant law enforcement officers should be subject to heavy fines, or their freedom should be limited.

Let us note that under the article on disobedience of the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO) they can still be imprisoned for up to 15 days. In addition, we are well aware of the current practice of applying this article: the court has repeatedly found participants in opposition actions guilty of this very disobedience, although eyewitnesses and even video recordings testified that there was no disobedience in the actions of the oppositionist. In addition, as some lawyers point out, the article on disobedience to the legal demands of police officers should not be applied on its own; it can only act as an aggravating circumstance. This is understandable: a legal demand from the police arises when an offense occurs: a person violates public order, the police demand that he stop violating or get on the bus, he refuses, and so on. That is, in an ideal situation, a person would be tried for some offense, as well as for disobedience. However, recently, disobedience has appeared as an independent article, and at the same time it is clearly used to imprison especially militant ones.

As for Tsvetkov, in recent days he has also managed to make a statement that the leader of the United Civil Front, Garry Kasparov, actually bit the unfortunate warrant officer of the Second Police Regiment. Tsvetkov claims that he is ready to confirm under oath that Kasparov bit (however, he says that his subordinates informed him about the fact of the bite, that is, he did not see it himself).

Let us recall that Tsvetkov is not only the head of the presidium of “Officers of Russia”, but also a member of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission for the implementation of public control over the provision of human rights in places of forced detention (POC). That is, generally speaking, his duty is to monitor the observance of the rights of detainees and prisoners, and not of those who violate these rights. However, some time ago the composition of the POC was greatly shaken up, and human rights activists were pushed aside by former security officials who advocate more for the rights of offended police officers and advocate that water should not be handed over to the police department for detainees.