Former police major general - about how the recertification of police officers works and why it will not help

The author is a Doctor of Law, retired police major general, former head of the Interpol bureau in Russia

In the ongoing reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, President Dmitry Medvedev relied on an extraordinary certification of all police personnel upon their transfer to serve in the police. Speaking on March 22, 2011 at the board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he stated: “Certification should be a serious exam and should allow the internal affairs bodies to be cleared of those who have compromised themselves, or those who are not ready to work according to their professional qualities.”

Externally, the certification was organized impeccably. By presidential decree No. 251 of March 1, 2011, a Commission under the President of the Russian Federation was established to conduct extraordinary certification of employees of internal affairs bodies. The commission was headed by the head of the presidential administration, Sergei Naryshkin. The commission included First Deputy Director of the FSB Sergei Smirnov, who oversees internal security in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the head of Rosfinmonitoring Yuri Chekhanchin, who has complete information about the movement of financial flows and the possible participation of senior employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in this, as well as Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin and the acting deputy chairman Investigative Committee Yuri Nyrkov.

In the same decree of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, when conducting certification, it is instructed to take into account the opinions of permanent coordination meetings to ensure law and order in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, formed in accordance with Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of December 11, 2010 No. 1535 “ On additional measures to ensure law and order .”

The corresponding commissions were created by order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the central office and in the regions . In other words, all organizational conditions have been created to cleanse the Ministry of Internal Affairs of those who have compromised themselves.

But with the second part of the question—getting rid of “those who are not ready to work according to their professional qualities”—big contradictions and problems arise. On the basis of what criteria will members of certification commissions of all levels base their conclusions?

The basis for assessing the professionalism of certified employees, from generals to privates, is the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia No. 25 of January 19, 2010 “Issues of assessing the activities of internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation, individual units of the criminal police, public security police and preliminary investigation bodies.” But it was precisely this current assessment system that Dmitry Medvedev harshly criticized at the same board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He said: “It is necessary to develop a new system of criteria for evaluating the performance of the police, which will be understandable both for the officers themselves and for the public. Let me remind you that at the moment there is an assessment system of 100 criteria, which blurs the assessment of activity and provides an opportunity for manipulation.”

Why does the current system allow for manipulation?

1. It is now proposed to negatively evaluate the activities of a particular police agency (and now the police), if during the “reporting period” per 100,000 population in a particular territory, the number of cases of criminal hooliganism, threats of murder or causing grievous harm to health, beatings, torture, intentional infliction of minor harm to health and harm of moderate severity . In fact, managers and ordinary employees of the internal affairs department are encouraged not to register these crimes, that is, to conceal them, to issue illegal decisions to refuse to initiate criminal cases. What does this lead to?

A pattern has long been proven in criminology: with the strengthening of the fight against hooliganism and minor crimes against the individual, the level of serious and especially serious violent and selfishly violent crimes decreases. Conversely, the curtailment of this struggle leads to an explosion of serious violent crime. This was the case in the village of Kushchevskaya and in Gus-Khrustalny. And most importantly, it turns out that “good employees” are those who successfully manipulate crime statistics. The police chiefs of Kushchevskaya and Gus-Khrustalny were in good standing. Their performance indicators met the requirements of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But it was on their territory that dangerous gangs operated for a long time and it was on their territory that thousands of hidden crimes were revealed.

2. A negative indicator in the same order is considered to be an increase in the number of crimes committed by minors, those with previous convictions and alcoholics. Here, police officers are directly pushed to artificially lower the rates of recidivism, juvenile and drunken crime.

3. Cover-ups and falsifications are driven by the position of the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to which a negative factor is the increase in the number of serious and especially serious crimes, the cases of which are suspended due to the fact that the crime remains unsolved (the accused has not been identified or has disappeared from the investigation). If this evaluation criterion remains, then the police department will continue to initiate cases mainly for those crimes where there is a prospect of detection! And those who knew how to deftly do this will, as before, be among the “advanced leaders” (“beautifully” refuse to initiate a criminal case, transfer the case to another territorial or transport authority).

4. Another criterion that encourages manipulation is a negative assessment of activity in a situation where the number of persons against whom proceedings have been terminated due to the absence of an event or corpus delicti, or due to non-involvement in the commission of a crime, is increasing . Never understood what is seditious here? After all, a case is opened precisely in order to carry out the necessary investigative actions and establish the involvement or non-involvement of a specific person in a specific crime!

5. Such a classic evaluation criterion as the detection of serious and especially serious crimes also leads to manipulation. There is still a model in place, according to which those employees who have a higher proportion of solved crimes among the crimes for which criminal cases were pending receive a positive assessment .

If the detection rate remains the main evaluation criterion, then massive concealment of crimes from accounting and manipulation of statistics will continue. And the best and recertified will be those who are most “adapted” to this vicious system.

The above and other flawed assessment criteria in accordance with the Instructions for assessing the activities of internal affairs bodies, approved by Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs No. 25, are included in the “calculation of the overall assessment of the internal affairs body, taking into account the significance coefficients of the indicators. Significance coefficients have a numerical value from 1 to 3. When calculating the overall rating, the number of positive and negative ratings for each indicator is multiplied by the corresponding coefficient. By summing, the total numbers of indicators that have a positive and negative rating are calculated. An overall positive assessment of the activities of the internal affairs department is given when the number of positively assessed indicators (taking into account significance coefficients) is at least 60%.”

On the basis of this primitive arithmetic insanity, it is proposed to evaluate the professionalism of leaders and employees of the future police during an extraordinary certification.

On the eve of the board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the start of certification, the press center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a statement: “Some media, as well as representatives of a number of public organizations, are disseminating information about alleged cases where employees of internal affairs bodies are asked to pay the manager a certain amount of money for passing an extraordinary certification. In this regard, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs officially declares that this information is not true. The algorithm for conducting extraordinary certification completely eliminates the possibility of such abuses and provides for collegial decision-making. The commissions will also include representatives of the public, which will become an additional control mechanism.”

In our opinion, with the current assessment system, abuses during extraordinary certification cannot be avoided. Probably, first it was necessary to develop new assessment criteria, and then begin certification. Or don't start at all. Limit yourself to a normal purge of the ranks of the police based on materials from the internal security units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB, publications in the media and appeals from citizens.

The author is a Doctor of Law, retired police major general, former head of the Interpol bureau in Russia

5 mistakes in recertification of the Ministry of Internal Affairs