Deputies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation submitted a bill to the State Duma, according to which the affiliation of the perpetrator of the crime to the police will no longer be considered an aggravating circumstance. The document is placed in the Duma electronic base.
It was developed by deputies Yuri Afonin, Denis Parfenov, Yuri Sinelshchikov and Nikolai Kolomeitsev. They want to exclude the clause on aggravating circumstances from Article 63 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (the commission of an intentional crime by an employee of the internal affairs bodies). It was introduced in 2010 during the police reform to "increase the level of responsibility of police officers to society," reminds human rights activist Pavel Chikov.
In the explanatory note, the deputies argue that this norm was needed to “strengthen the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of citizens and organizations from illegal actions of employees of the internal affairs bodies.” However, now this, from their point of view, discriminates against the police themselves – in comparison with employees of other law enforcement agencies.
They refer to the statistics of the Prosecutor General's Office: according to these data, the proportion of crimes committed by police officers is less than a third of the total number of crimes committed by all law enforcement officers.
“In addition to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, law and order in Russia is also provided by employees of the courts, the prosecutor’s office, the FSB, the FSO, the National Guard, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the military police, customs, etc. The offender’s belonging to these structures is not an aggravating circumstance, which is clearly unfair,” the deputies say. At the same time, they do not propose to toughen the responsibility for all security forces – only to reduce it for the police.
If the status of an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is removed from among the aggravating circumstances, this, the parliamentarians assure, will allow "to restore the logic of legislative regulation and avoid emphasizing undeserved and unfair distrust of the current employees of the internal affairs bodies."
The Cabinet of Ministers has already supported the bill, but the Supreme Court has not made any comments.