Text version
0:00
Police officers are generally assumed to all be
0:03
on the side of the current government and against the opposition.
0:05
That it, in particular, has nothing to offer them.
0:07
In its platform. But that is one hundred percent
0:09
not true, and my program is written specifically in the
0:12
interests of real police officers
0:15
who do the work that citizens need
0:17
every day. Right now, we are allocating
0:20
insane amounts of money to all kinds of so-
0:21
called security and law enforcement personnel.
0:23
But none of it reaches people like Roman Khabarov, district police officers,
0:26
criminal investigators, and rank-and-file personnel.
0:28
Simply nothing gets through. My name is Roman
0:30
Khabarov.
0:31
I am a retired Ministry of Internal Affairs officer with 20 years of service,
0:37
14 of them spent working
0:39
as a district police officer and senior district police officer.
0:41
I retired in
0:43
2011. My salary
0:46
was about 18,000 rubles.
0:48
You need to understand that the daily work of a district police officer
0:50
is about 80 percent reduced to writing
0:52
various kinds of paperwork: statements,
0:54
explanations, certificates, reports, rulings,
0:58
conclusions. There is no other way
1:00
for management to monitor their employees and
1:02
evaluate their work, as our authorities apparently know of none
1:05
except to look at how many papers they have
1:07
written and about what. In addition, officers
1:09
are forced to buy at their own expense
1:11
practically all office
1:12
supplies.
1:13
They buy their own paper and pens,
1:16
refill printer cartridges, replace light bulbs
1:18
in their offices. In other words, the Ministry of Internal Affairs
1:21
allocates no money for this at all, and
1:23
of course this also affects
1:25
employees' ability to work.
1:27
In addition, officers are not provided with
1:30
housing. I do not know of a single case when
1:32
a district police officer, myself included, received
1:35
an apartment—not after six months, not after a year,
1:37
not even after five years. As a rule, apartments
1:39
were actually given to the 'needy'
1:40
managers, because managers
1:42
always seem to be in great need of
1:44
better housing. As a result, officers
1:46
for years
1:47
live in very difficult housing
1:50
conditions, with their parents, even though they already have
1:52
families and children of their own.
1:57
They are cutting the people who actually do the work—there is a term for it,
2:00
"on the ground"—that is, the same
2:01
criminal investigation officers,
2:03
district police officers. For example, if in 2010
2:07
in the department where I worked, in the Levoberezhny District Department
2:09
of the city of Voronezh, there were 44
2:11
district police officers, now there are 30. I know for certain that
2:15
most decent police officers
2:16
want to take satisfaction in
2:18
their work. They really want
2:20
to help people. They want to have
2:21
time for that. But it is
2:22
truly just insulting for a
2:25
country: 2 trillion rubles are spent
2:27
on security and law enforcement
2:30
activities, more than 1 trillion on
2:33
the police alone, yet every rank-and-file police officer
2:35
will tell you how he buys
2:38
printer cartridges with his own money,
2:40
how not even the most basic expenses are covered,
2:41
and about the half-ruined condition
2:44
of police stations—but you can see that
2:46
for yourselves. On the one hand, we have
2:48
a monstrously bloated number of police officers and
2:51
security personnel in general. In terms of the number
2:53
of police officers per capita, we are
2:55
among the top countries in the world. But in the fight
2:58
against crime, this has no
2:59
effect whatsoever. Overall, the so-called
3:02
security and law enforcement agencies, excluding the army, include 2
3:05
and a half million people. On the other
3:08
hand,
3:08
the most important police officers—the ones who
3:11
work on the ground—are always in short supply, and
3:13
they scrape by in fairly miserable conditions.
3:16
The enormous sums being allocated right now
3:19
are being devoured by an oversized bureaucracy,
3:22
the generals, and monstrous corrupt
3:25
procurement schemes, where everything is bought for two or three
3:28
times the market price. So who is interested in that?
3:31
Certainly not the citizens of Russia.
3:32
My program is about
3:35
making the real priority
3:37
the front line of policing: police stations,
3:40
district police officers, criminal investigators, inquiry officers, and
3:42
investigators—the people who work with the public and in
3:44
whose area of responsibility lie 90
3:48
percent of the crimes committed in the
3:50
country. They need to be given funding. They need
3:53
to be given apartments.
3:54
They need to be given equipment and gear using
3:56
the latest technology, and I will do that
3:59
when I become President of Russia.