Police unions and civil society organizations can contribute to fight against corruption in the police

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During the three-day seminar, participants worked on the identification of corruption risks in Ministry of Interior, discussed roll of civil society organizations and police unions in fight against corruption, and also considered possible measures for reduction risk of corruption. The seminar, which took place from 11th till 13th May on Mokra gora, gathered representatives of the Internal Affairs Sector, Departments of human resources, criminal, border and traffic police, police unions and civil society organizations gathered in the A-COP group.

“It is necessary to legally regulate authorization and demarcate competences in work of different units in charge of controlling legality of work and internal control of the police, which implies changing of the Law on Police. Human, material, and financial capabilities of Internal Affairs Sector need to be strengthened in order to enable them to independently work”, concluded BCSP Executive Director Predrag Petrovic, while presenting results of a research conducted by BCSP within the project “A-COP: Civil Society Against Police Corruption”.

Civil society organizations should control process of the public procurement

Civil society organizations in Serbia recognize that there is a problem with corruption in the police, but emphasize that they neither have enough knowledge about corruption, nor capacities to investigate individual cases. Also, they point out that cooperation with the police isn't developed enough. This point was stressed by the BCSP researcher Sasa Djordjevic while presenting results of the BCSP research on involvement of civil society organizations in fighting against the problem of corruption in the police.

“Civil society organizations in Serbia don't advocate fight against corruption in the police, even though they think that the police is third state actor when it comes to the problem of corruption. Therefore, it is necessary for them to strengthen their cooperation with organizations that are dealing with investigative journalism, as well as with the police unions in order to act jointly on strengthening the integrity of the police”, emphasized BCSP researcher.

During the discussion, participants agreed that civil society organizations need to encourage citizens to report on cases of corruption. Also, representatives of the police unions stressed that civil society organizations should take a bigger role in controlling the process of public procurement. Participants agreed that the process of public procurement is one of the biggest risk of corruption. Combined with their knowledge and experience, civil society organizations could contribute to the transparency of this process and in that way decrease possibility for corruption to appear. Besides that, participants agreed that the police unions need to be included in changing of the Law on Police.

The risks of corruption in the departments of human resources, traffic, criminal and border police

{image2} Participants of the seminar agreed that the management of human resources is one of the big problems in the Ministry of Interior.

“Due to specific positions in the Ministry and the nature of the work they do, the staff in the Department of Human Resources is not directly exposed to corruption. Not an employee of the Department was terminated of employment as a result of corruption, either any of employees due to corruption was punished in some other way, and the Department has not been the subject of citizen complaints on this basis. However, the risks of corruption are present, especially in the processes of recruitment and relocation”, said Ivan Aleksic from the Human Resources Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia.

Ivica Drobnjaković from the Department of Criminal Police said that the encouraging fact is that all policy documents in the Ministry of Interior recognized the Department of Criminal Police and the Internal Affairs Sector as a mechanism to combat corruption. He pointed out that the Department of criminal police has eight departments and that two of them are dealing with the fight against corruption. Talking about corruption in the border police, Nebojsa Kujović pointed out a numerous trainings which attended staff of the border police in order to increase awareness of the problem of corruption. He pointed out that the project of investigating and combating corruption at the border, which was conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice of the United States in which were identified risks of corruption in this segment of the police.

In a BCSP research citizens identified traffic police as the most corrupt. Bojan Markovic from the Department of traffic police said that numerous preventive measures to combat corruption were implemented, such as the introduction of video surveillance on Corridor 10, the deployment of police officers in accordance with the place of residence, withdrawal from the use of radar devices without recording video and introduction of photo documentations of offences.

“In addition to a number of preventive measures that are essential measures to fight corruption, Department of Traffic Police, in cooperation with the Internal Affairs Sector will implement repressive measures of criminal and disciplinary accountability to corrupt police officers. Additionally, it is needed a systematic approach that includes the involvement of all state organs and institutions in the fight against corruption, as well as the private sector, non-governmental organizations and associations of citizens”, said Markovic.

Role of Internal Affairs Sector in fighting corruption

{image3} Zoran Ilic from the Internal Affairs Sector presented the seminar participants work of the Sector, as well as the issues and challenges facing the Sector in its work.

“The Internal Control does not have enough staff. The Sector has 90 employees, and according to European standards we should have at least 460 employees. Also unresolved is the question of the division of competence between the units of the Ministry with its internal control and the police officer dealing with the legality and the Sector”, said Zoran Ilic.

He also pointed out the dilemma of whether jurisdiction of Internal Affairs Sector should refer only to the police officers of the Police Directorate or to all employees of the Ministry of Interior. Speaking about the cooperation with international organizations in Serbia, Ilic said that members of Internal Affairs Sector participated in the implementation of the risk analysis of corruption during the project of the Council of Europe “Strengthening the capacity of the law enforcement and judiciary in the fight against corruption in Serbia”. Findings will be presented in a separate report.

“The report will highlight the importance of prevention and building integrity institutions, which is a priority in Europe. Repression should exist, but should be in the background. In Serbia, too much energy is spent on individual cases of corruption, and little is paid to preventive mechanisms”, said Lado Laličić from the Council of Europe.