Improvement:
1. Use of preventive and coercive police means is elaborated and indicated in the Law. For instance, use of force and special means was regulated by the secondary legislation.
2. Article 11 indicates a guidance for the police work evaluation – public trust is the main criteria. An old system based on formal quantitative performance assessment reported at the same period last year should be overcome at all levels. But indication in the Law wouldn’t be enough – it can become a mere formality – this guidance should be consistently implemented in other laws and bylaws.
3. Cooperation of the police with the public is detailed (article 9, 11) along with new mechanisms of participation in management decision making: police commissions (article 51), evaluation committees (article 57) and section 8 “Public control over police” (which hasn’t been realized yet).
Disadvantages:
1. According to the new Law “On National Police”, police has much more reasons to check documents (article 32). There is a reason, which can be interpreted by the police officer against you: police officer has the right to require your identification papers “if there are sufficient reasons to believe that the person had committed or is going to commit a crime”.
Such intent can be interpreted differently by the legislator and the police. Such norm looks artificial, because it doesn’t include a reason for the police officer’s assumption as all other paragraphs do.
2. The Law introduced new institution of a “superficial inspection”, what legitimized (defined and provided by the law) an old institution of an external (superficial) examination, provided by the Statute of the Patrol Service. External examination is a preventive police measure, which includes a visual examination of a person, its belongings or a transport vehicle. It should be carried out by a person of a particular gender. However, this procedure doesn’t provide for drafting a protocol what may threaten your rights (unlike “examination of a person” in the Code of Administrative Offences, which requires drafting a protocol or mentioning in a protocol on administrative offense/arrest). Superficial inspection can be prior to a personal examination or examination of belongings (article 264 of the CUoAO, p.5 article 236 of the CPC). There are three types of superficial inspection and examination of belongings: a) external examination of a person (citizen); b) external examination of belongings; c) external examination of a transport vehicle.
(Law of Ukraine “On National Police” article 34)
3. Any person, arrested for administrative offense, can be subject to fingerprinting for obtaining biometrical data. Previous Law “On Police” provided for this procedure only for people, apprehended for a crime or detained for an administrative offense (administrative penalty for 15 days or less imposed by the court). This information is kept on tenprint records, which are sent to the Research forensic centers of the MIA of Ukraine (RFC). Retention period for biometric data is not defined (Order of the MIA of Ukraine number 785 as of 11.09.2001 “On ratification of the instruction on fingerprinting in the expert service of the MIA of Ukraine”).
It means that your biometrical data may be used against you any time.
(p. 7, 8 part 1, part 2 of the Law of Ukraine “On National Police”)