October 12, 2016 (UA)

Those who followed the process of police attestation were not surprised by the low result that was published on 3 October. The main problem, namely – general ineffectiveness of the process of conducting attestation – became clear already in February and was criticized by the experts, scholars and even by members of attestation commissions. Then it became clear that if this won’t be fixed, police will have, first of all, a low result of the very attestation, secondly – a number of lawsuits to administrative courts that will be massively satisfied in favor of plaintiffs.

Unfortunately, police did not react to the criticism and until the end of the attestation process did not recognize the mistakes made. And first of all – did not introduce substantial changes to the attestation procedure, and, therefore, sabotaged the whole attestation of old «militia» officers. On the contrary, police accused others (courts) in facilitation of «revenge of militia system» (Khatia Dekonaidze) or predecessors in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine who elaborated the Instruction on the Order of Conducting Attestation pursuant to which they were forced to act.

Even though the attestation is only one of the stages of police reform, but it demonstrates the «decisiveness» of the leadership of the National Police of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine to really reform the agency they are responsible for, and not just to pursue declarative reforms which we have enough of in our country. Each new minister of internal affairs, taking the office, started the imitation of reforms: issued decrees on reorganization; people, guilty of minor offences, were demonstratively released of service; name shields on offices, last names, titles etc. were changed. At the same time, just as today, there was an attestation process that had the same result of about 5-10% of officers released of service. What is the difference then between the results of the last attestation and those received during all other bureaucratical and closed departmental attestations of police officers conducted in previous years of Ukraine’s independence?

All points provided below are based, particularly, on the materials of previous publications on police attestation, systemic analysis of all accessible data regarding attestation taken from different sources as well as on personal experience of participation of Expert group representatives in the work of attestation commissions.

Thus, in short on the results of police attestation:

І. 
7.7% of former militia officers were released of service (68 135 persons were subject to attestation, 5 256 of them were fired).

Meaning 92,3% of old personnel continue working in police on different positions. The police itself articulate 2 numbers: 1) 14% of persons who did not pass the attestation (5 267 – did not pass, the number includes 4 766 persons who were demoted); 2) 26% of top leadership is released of service which changes the impression, however makes us understand that it is the old personnel that became the new police.

We are not talking about the general structure of police (for example, rotation in patrol service meant to recruit new people that came to police for the first time) – police really receives new personnel, the part of old ones, however, leads to preserving informal corporate practices of police work which have long ago become standard for militia-police officers meaning that a “collective facelessness” continues to take place. (E.Durkheim).

We also turn your attention to the following numbers:

a) secretariat of the National Police of Ukraine – 5 055 were subject to attestation, 590 of them were released of service (11,7%) – though it is the quantity of secretariat personnel that should be put under question. To our mind, it is necessary to start not from the attestation of this unit, but from diagnosis of problems, reorganization and anti-corruption expertise of the work of the Secretariat of the National Police of Ukraine;
b) department for Combating Drug Trafficking (Former Unit for Combating Illegal Drug Trafficking) – 418 were subject to attestation, with 68 of them being released (16,2%);
c) department for Protection of Economy (former Dept. for Combating Economic Crimes) – 2 053 were subject to attestation, with 313 of them being released of service (15,2%).

It is hard to evaluate the results of work of these departments, as well as the work of the whole criminal block in general, because the systemic problems have existed in these departments for decades and do not yield to reforms easily. Personnel changes (that unfortunately did not happen) will not substantially change the situation, the institutional working practices, however, are more easy to correct by renewing personnel and conducting organizational and legal changes at the same time.

 

ІІ. The result of attestation is low and does not correspond to the goals and objectives of attestation – evaluation of business, professional, personal traits of police officers, their educational and qualification levels, based on a profound and comprehensive study to identify the correspondence to the position and potential for promotion in service (art 57 of the Law of Ukraine “On National Police”). So either the most of old militia officers (more than 90%) the level of trust in whom was extremely low, are professional and virtuous, or the very mechanism of conducting attestation allowed for the possibilities of non-objective evaluation of all the above mentioned traits.

In the first case the question arises – why do we need the reform and attestation then if the problem is not in the police personnel? The second case shows ineffective use of tax payers money and funds of international technical assistance that were invested in the process of police attestation – why were business structures engaged to the work of the Recruiting Center and what is the point in efforts of police to provide PR support to the process? Not to speak about the input of civil society that in this or that way took part in the work of commissions from the start and to the end.

ІІІ.
 In short about the main problems of the order (mechanism) of conducting attestation:

— Instruction on the order of conducting attestation, approved by the Order №1465 has a number of discrepancies with the Law “On the National Police”. For example, in understanding the terms, necessary to conduct an attestation, since the Final and Transitional provisions of the Law foresee a three-month period between signing of the Law and its coming into force;

— certain categories of police officers that are not subject to attestation – service personnel (for example, drivers), technical support officers. De facto, these positions could have been occupied by police officers performing functions of other police officers subject to attestation (for example, a member of quick response group working on the position of a driver and not subject to attestation in Kryve Ozero);

— absence of independent recording of meetings of attestation commissions, first of all, audio recording of motivation of commission members who using discretional mandate adopted a decision. There was some progress in solving this issue, for example, unification of the procedure of protocolling and keeping records of protocols, introduction of video recording (however only during the last month of attestation). However, the flaws that substantially influence the justification of commissions’ decisions, indicated in court decisions, were not taken into consideration – for example, the indication of open sources of information on facts of corruption or other characteristics that badly characterize a person undergoing attestation etc.;

— absence of clearly formulated conditions under which a decision on officer’s release of service based on the results of attestation can be made – item 16 of Section 4 of the Instruction approved by the Decree №1465 of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine of 17 November 2015 has a number of criteria that have to be taken into account when making a decision (indicators of service activity, merit recognitions, etc. ) which in practice created situations when the court in motivation part of its decision indicated that the decision of commission was biased because according to all parameters, except interview, a person was positively characterized. In reality, we are talking about the evaluation of a subordinate done by the leadership of police which was in most cases positive, therefore the Instruction from the very beginning created the possibility to successfully appeal against the decision of commissions in court due to the absence of independent legal construction;

— institute of remote attestation which ruins the idea of an interview and comprehensive evaluation of a person subject to attestation by the attestation commission. Studying the attestation paper compiled by the leadership that has indicators of service activity, personal characteristics etc., does not give enough possibilities to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of a person undergoing attestation. In most cases, such characteristics are formal and positive, and were given by superiors who did not pass the attestation. According to evaluations of several heads of commissions it is around 60% of officers who passed the attestation remotely due to lack of time and resources;

— though decisions of attestation commissions are obligatory for superiors having the right to appoint a police officer to a position and release him or her of service in police, in practice they were not always executed and there was no proper control over their execution. According to evaluations of several heads of attestation commissions, decisions on release of service in police received about 40% of those who underwent the attestation. Such data puts proper execution of decisions of commissions under question. «Recommendation» character of decisions of commissions can also be seen from several public statements of the leadership of the National Police of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine as well the statements made by NGOs (first of all «Automaidan»);

— attestation procedure underwent certain organizational changes (from attestation of all to creation of «bushes» of attestation of superiors etc.), which dragged the very process of attestation and created certain service unclarity with police officers themselves.

Thus, with the old 92,3% of «militia» officers who continued their service in police, it is hard to build a really new police, and with such a political «decisiveness», which the National Police of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs have today, it is impossible. This can be seen, particularly, from the process of attestation.

Attestation of police had to provide vacancies for new people striving to become part of new police when entering service for the first time who should have been selected on a competitive basis by police commissions. However, this did not happen and police recruitment was not as big as it was expected.

Police commissions, that de facto have not started working yet, is a separate issue to be highlighted later.