January 24, 2017 (UA)

On January 20, a group of national deputies presented draft laws on amendments to Laws of Ukraine “On National Police” and “On National Guard” regarding identification of police officers and soldiers of the National Guard of Ukraine during policing and public security number 5700 and 5701, which were developed with the involvement of the group experts.

Legal regulation of police insignia, that includes a number of a special badge (part 3 article 20 of the Law of Ukraine “On National Police”), faced a problem – figures on badges are too small to read them in a day light and are absolutely unreadable at night. At the same time, in practice, many police officers keep their badges in pockets during the day, what was confirmed by the last “Police under control” monitoring campaign, conducted by the Association UMDPL. Thus badges don’t fulfill its identification function.

Soldiers of the National Guard, who are involved in the public security on peaceful assemblies, don’t have any identification signs at all. Continue reading “A group of national deputies presented draft laws on identification of police officers and soldiers of the National Guard, which were developed together with experts of the group” →

December 21, 2016 (UA)

In the course of discussion «New System of Ukrainian Police Evaluation: how to avoid «old» problems», which was held by the Expert group «Police under Control» on 20 December 2016 in Kyiv, experts on human rights proposed a new system of evaluation of police effectiveness. In order to implement it is necessary for the quality evaluation to be provided by the commissions that depending on the unit shall be comprised of representatives of police, bar, former law enforcement officers etc.

The proposed system was presented in the scientific and practical publication of the Expert group «Evaluation of Effectiveness of Police Work in Ukraine: form “sticks” to the new system (on pre-trial investigation example)» (unfortunately only in Ukrainian).

Today de facto continues to exist one of the relics of the Soviet militia – «baton» system of evaluation of police effectiveness which leads to a number of human rights violations within the criminal justice system. The basis of this system is the «cases solved» indicator formed according to categories of crime components for pre-trial authorities and number of administrative protocols on certain articles for other services.

Continue reading “New system of police evaluation has to be focused on people but not on departmental statistics: media report” →

December 6, 2016 (UA)

Group of national deputies made amendments to the second reading of the draft law number 4670 “On Disciplinary Statute of the National Police of Ukraine”, which were developed with the involvement of a working group, that had worked on the law enforcement reform – Reanimation Package of Reforms (RPR) and other human rights activists.

Experts of our group actively participated in development of amendments and keep on monitoring work on the draft law, because introduction of an effective accountability mechanism is very important part of the Police reorganization.

New Disciplinary Statute represents improved version of the previous law – Disciplinary Statute of the Law Enforcement, because it lacked European norms, which were included into recommendations of the OSCE and the Council of Europe, for example – introduction of an appropriate body for investigation of complaints against the police, etc.

But refinement of the draft law is a significant step to publicity and effective official investigations of disciplinary violations in the police.

Important amendments proposed for the second reading of the draft law “On Disciplinary Statute of the National Police in Ukraine” number 4670:

Continue reading “Group of national deputies introduced amendments into the draft law “On Disciplinary Statute of the NPU”, which were developed with the involvement of the group experts” →