The Economist: Cops for hire

March 19, 2010

Reform­ing Russia’s vio­lent and cor­rupt police will not be easy

THEY shoot, beat and tor­ture civil­ians, con­fis­cate busi­ness­es and take hostages. They are feared and dis­trust­ed by two-thirds of the coun­try. But they are not for­eign occu­piers, mer­ce­nar­ies or mafia; they are Russia’s police offi­cers. The few decent cops among them are seen as mould-break­ing heroes and dissidents.

Dai­ly reports of police vio­lence read like wartime bul­letins. Recent cas­es include a ran­dom shoot­ing by a police offi­cer in a Moscow super­mar­ket (sev­en wound­ed, two dead), the grue­some tor­ture and killing of a jour­nal­ist in Tom­sk, and the case of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, a young lawyer for an Amer­i­can invest­ment fund. He was denied med­ical treat­ment and died in pre-tri­al deten­tion in Moscow hav­ing accused sev­er­al police offi­cers of fraud.

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