Vladimir Kolokoltsev led the police on the offensive

In May, Police Lieutenant General Vladimir Kolokoltsev was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs. For the first time in the last 12 years, the department was headed not by a politician, like Boris Gryzlov, and not by a security officer, like Rashid Nurgaliev, but by the most professional policeman, who went through all the steps of the career ladder in the internal affairs bodies. The arrival of his own man in the department immediately affected both its personnel policy and specific cases. Never before have the department's operational services acted so aggressively.

Vladimir Kolokoltsev headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs a few months after the transformation of the department initiated by the then President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev was completed. As soon as he took office, the general did not criticize the actions of his predecessor, Army General Nurgaliev and his deputy Alexander Smirny, who, according to many, actually failed the reform of the department, but only stated that it was now entering a practical stage. Mr. Kolokoltsev immediately outlined the main priorities: improving the quality of personnel; establishing order in the area of crime registration; combating relapses of the “stick system” of reporting; achieving mutual understanding with civil society.

Personnel changes in the department began immediately. In just two months, almost the entire senior leadership in the central apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was replaced. Moreover, almost all appointments can be reduced to one formula: practitioners come to the department - the same as the minister himself. Many of the new appointees, for example the current head of the Main Directorate of Criminal Investigation, Viktor Golovanov, previously worked in the capital’s internal affairs bodies (Mr. Golovanov headed the MUR for many years) and are well acquainted with the requirements of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Others, for example, Deputy Minister Mikhail Vanichkin, Mr. Kolokoltsev knows well from his work in units fighting organized crime. According to many employees of the central apparatus, the Kremlin supports Vladimir Kolokoltsev’s reliance on career police officers, so the minister took little time to create his team. However, he himself does not like the word “team” in this context and prefers to talk about “a team of like-minded people.”

Another area of personnel work was the optimization of the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After the reform, the number of headquarters units in the central apparatus of the department increased and the number of operational units sharply decreased (up to 40%). Meanwhile, Mr. Kolokoltsev has repeatedly said that structural changes for him are possible only in one direction - in favor of operatives and district officers, that is, those who are involved in protecting people and investigating crimes against them, and to the detriment of rear officials. According to Kommersant, over the past months, without much publicity, the department has been consistently optimizing the structure and number of departments and headquarters in different areas of work.

Vladimir Kolokoltsev in the Ministry of Internal Affairs also retained the principle of personal responsibility of department heads for offenses and crimes of subordinates, which he introduced back in the capital’s headquarters. The dismissal of police chiefs as a reaction to the crimes of their subordinates has become a widespread practice. So, recently, after a fight with shooting, organized in Tuapse by local traffic cops and police officers, all the leaders of those who committed the crime were fired. And before this, police leaders were subjected to severe disciplinary sanctions, due to whose oversight the shooting incident in Sagra that caused great public outcry occurred.

This approach, according to Minister Kolokoltsev, will continue in the future. “This was a basic decision - to tighten the screws and increase discipline. Our leaders are not afraid of anything: they are reprimanded, severely reprimanded, deprived of bonuses - something like that... They are afraid of either dismissal or criminal prosecution,” he said in a recent Interview with Kommersant with the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Vladimir Kolokoltsev also preserved another tradition that was characteristic of him back in the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow - cooperation with the public. Soon after his appointment as minister, he signed an order to create an expanded working group under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which included senators, deputies, human rights activists, lawyers, former high-ranking employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other law enforcement agencies. Recently, the group (Kommersant reported about this) handed over to the leadership of the department the “road map” it had developed, which details proposals for further reform of the internal affairs bodies. The document, in particular, proposes a transformation of the procedure for receiving, registering, recording applications and reports of crimes, as well as procedural support for their objective assessment and investigation. The result of this work, according to the members of the working group, should be the creation of a system of transparent, reliable and complete recording of information about crimes, which will replace the previously existing “stick system”.

Finally, Minister Kolokoltsev revived the large-scale special operations in the regions that were widely practiced in the 90s. The first, last summer, was held in Kabardino-Balkaria (KBR). The result was a high-profile case involving several high-ranking officials of the republic, including the head of the administration of the head of the KBR, the minister and his deputy. Then employees of the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs held on-site events in St. Petersburg in the case of pipe fraud. And recently, a special operation was carried out in Tambov, where employees of the Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption (GUEBiPK) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs uncovered a large theft of budget funds allocated to agricultural producers in the region.

It should be noted that never before have employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs worked so aggressively as under the new minister. Only on the basis of the materials of the GUEBiPK were the cases of Oboronservis initiated; in relation to the ex-head of VEB-Invest LLC; regarding the theft of funds allocated from the budget for the preparation and holding of the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit; and in relation to employees of the state monopolist in the field of providing brokerage services at customs - FSUE ROSTEK.

Alexander Igorev

The Ministry of Internal Affairs got closer to the point