The ex-policeman filmed illegal arrests at the protest. He was charged with a criminal offense

I have worked in the police since 2015, starting as a patrol officer. At the time of his dismissal on February 2, 2021, he was an inspector of service organization in a temporary detention facility. Five years in the police were enough for me to understand what the system is. In 2019, I saw how brutally the security forces dispersed protesters in Moscow, and I realized that I would move towards dismissal. Then - the adoption of amendments to the Constitution, which destroyed the hope that at least some social and legal institutions work in our country. The poisoning of Alexei Navalny, his detention after returning to Russia and the suppression of the January protests convinced me completely.

Even before my dismissal, I was active on social networks and spoke out on sensitive topics. The leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ivanovo region, of course, was not happy about this. The policeman is a silent creature. But even after finishing my service, I did not enter into direct confrontation with the Ivanovo security forces.

On April 21, a rally was held in Ivanovo for the release of Navalny, I decided to go to the protest in order to record violations by law enforcement officers and then help the protesters in the courts. I filmed the arrests on my phone for about an hour, until the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who was present at the action, ordered his subordinate Alexander Chinenov, who is now a victim in my case, to detain me.

Chinenov approached the two “cosmonauts” and told them to “grab” me and “solve the issue with the video recordings from the phone.” I managed to move about ten meters away from the police when they suddenly flew up from behind, grabbed me by the arms and dragged me into the paddy wagon. One of the security forces tried to knock the phone out of my hands, but hit the stabilizer on which the phone was attached and broke it in half. They pushed me into a paddy wagon, I managed to tell Chinenov that his actions were illegal and I would appeal them.

The door slammed, I was put in the “glass” - a tiny single booth in the paddy wagon. Policeman Chinenov remained on the street. In the “glass” I managed to mutter under my breath about what chaos the security forces were doing. All this time the phone continued to film, I did not have time to turn off the camera.

I and other detainees were taken to the Leninsky police station. I didn’t expect this from my former colleagues, but they decided to conduct a personal search of me alone and confiscated all my things, including my phone and even my passport.

While I was waiting for the report to be drawn up, the police downloaded the recording of my arrest from my phone and deleted all the video. This recording, which only the police had, somehow ended up on a local telegram channel. As I learned later, an anonymous applicant saw this post and contacted the Investigative Committee with a statement that Sergei Rimsky allegedly insulted law enforcement officer Alexander Chinenov (according to the investigation, he insulted Chinenov on video - note OVD-Info ).

A couple of days after my arrest, the investigator called me and told me about the materials of the pre-investigation check against me. The investigation was silent for a month, and I knew nothing about the case until the day of the search. On May 22, the day I planned to go to an environmental rally, at 6:30 a.m. four machine gunners, two “eschniks ,” an investigator and an expert burst into my apartment. The riot policeman pushed me back against the wall with his shield, the investigator read out the search warrant in the case of insulting a government official ( Article 319 of the Criminal Code ). The search took two hours. All equipment was confiscated: a laptop, two phones, hard drives, flash drives, even the girl’s electronic photo frame.

The investigator motivated the search as follows: an employee of Center “E” drew up a report that I run a channel on YouTube, shoot videos in an “improvised studio in the apartment” and can store secret documents at home that I supposedly had left after my service.

The search did not give the investigator anything new for the case, it only frayed my nerves. The accusation against me is based on an anonymous statement about a video uploaded by unknown people to a telegram channel, and the testimony of a detainee who was in the paddy wagon with me. Besides me, there were three protesters in the car on April 21. Two people sitting closer to me told the investigator that they had not heard any insults from me. The third detainee has already been interrogated several times, and with each interrogation he reveals more and more details. Perhaps he is under pressure, but I can’t say for sure. Three months have passed since my arrest, and the prosecution witness continues to remember more and more.