They are serving, and it turns out they are saving for the sake of the state

21/04/2009 Lilit AVAGYAN

Recently the police day was celebrated and police officers and officials said in their interview that when they were choosing their profession they thought they would have a romantic job. It is a fact that throughout the time romanticism was replaced with realism, and eventually turned to uncompromising pragmatism. In other words, neither the celebration of the police day nor the medals and prizes given to the police by the government can change our opinions concerning the police, which are worse than just being bad.

Are the police officers so honest and not corrupt as described by the modern composers in their creations. Do the singers, who are praising the police in their songs, really feel safe and protected? Maybe they are. However it is enough to learn about the chronics of crimes, scuffles and conflicts between clans and murders in order do same the same thing as all suffered people say or don’t say if they die as a result of crimes: “we called the police at once, but they arrived when everything was finished already.” It is hard to imagine how many murders would be prevented if the police really respected their duties and would arrive in time to prevent crimes and murders.
 
Let’s remember the incident at Odnoklassniki café when, according to witness Artur Sahakyan, who is the head of Radionews program of the national radio, he had called the police before the scuffle provoked by the bodyguards of MP Levon Sargsyan but the police arrived after everything had finished and the only person they found in the place of the incident was the dead body of an innocent victim.
 
In order not to go too far, let’s cite the statement recently published by the ombudsman’s office, according to which on the night of April 10 a group of young people were illegally brought to the police department of Arabkir community and beaten up. One of these young people named Arsen M. says that the numerous injuries on his body are a result of the fact that the police bate him up on the way to the police department. By the way, the ombudsman also expressed concerns about the rude behavior of the police to the employees of the ombudsman’s office.
 
The oligarch’s bodyguards feel very secure when they beat up people and commit violence, the high rank officials’ sons feel very safe and protected when they shoot or involve in hooliganism because they know and they are sure that the police will not interfere because they are afraid too. For example, the police did not interfere during the incident and violence in Artashat on April 4. Generally it is impossible to find any information concerning such violence of the rights of innocent people, shootings and other crimes committed by the mentioned group of people in the police reports. People learn about such things only due to press publications.
 
It is not so hard to find proofs of the fact that the police is passive and don’t do their job in a duly manner. You can select any newspaper and open the relative web site to see different statements which prove this passiveness on part of the police. We tried to do this too. We opened the media web site for May 27, 2008 and found the following article: “At night, at Santa Fe cafe, not far from the monument of Tamanyan, a group of people were quarrelling till four o’clock in the morning. The residents of the surrounding buildings heard the voices of people scuffling, and in the morning there was blood in the place of the scuffle, however there is no information about it in the police information resource centers.”
 
It seems that police officers prefer their night dreams more important than their duty to prevent crimes. There is another proof of this fact too, which happened during the peaceful action of young people to attach posters and information concerning corrupt lecturers of universities. What did the police say in answer to the question of the jurisprudence department dean of the state University? He asked how it comes that the police catch oppositionists and do not let them attach posters in streets but they have not seen these action participants attaching posters of corrupt lecturers. In answer the police said that the posters were attached at night, thus the police could not see them doing this.

Instead of preventing real crimes, one can see policemen in dark with hand weapons walking in the North Avenue and trying to prevent peaceful walks of citizens. The police are really active, decisive and brave when dispersing gatherings of oppositionists and demonstration participants. They may disperse peaceful citizens and violate their rights without any sense of respect to the human being, especially if they may deserve a medal granted by the president or prime minister on the day of the police, and later in the evening have real fun at a show where humorist Ashot Ghazaryan will do his best to entertain them…