Soviet police in for ‘vigorous’ clean-up

Press, 13 January 1987, Page 8

Soviet police in for ‘vigorous’ clean-up

NZPA-AFP Moscow The Minister for the Interior, Alexander Viassov yesterday announced a “vigorous” clean-up of the Soviet police, some of whom, he said, were “unfit for the job and even habitual criminals.”

The Soviet police were “inefficient in combating crime, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, illegal foreign currency dealing and traffic in pornographic video cassettes, as well as prostitution,” Mr Vlassov said in an interview with the Young Communist daily, “Komsomolskaya Pravda”. He also attacked “negligence, poor training and a low standard of physical fitness,” making some officers “incapable of overpowering a delinquent”

The clean-up move comes just days after last Friday’s unprecedented announcement that K.G.B. (secret police) officers had been sanctioned for the illegal two-week detention of a Soviet journalist in the* Ukraine. Mr Vlassov, who promised to tighten up recruitment procedures

for the police, said that in future each case of police “violation of the law” would be urgently studied and “we will get rid of those who are unworthy of our trust.” He disclosed that a hold-up in a large Moscow store had been carried out by “an extremely dangerous gang” of former police officers who had been dismissed in 1984.

The gang was “neutralised,” he said, but an unspecified number of cashiers and a police officer had been killed in the process.

Mr Vlassov said that women would be excluded from a volunteer auxiliary police force, known as the Druzhniki, which patrols urban streets.

“It is a man’s job,” he said. Women “would be more of a help to us by devoting themselves to difficult children and the fight against drug addiction and alcoholism.” Mr Vlassov also revealed that the Praesidium. of the Supreme Soviet was planning to crack down bn illegal currency dealing and prostitution.