300 police officers fired in Russia this year after complaints from citizens
Russian police have had to dismiss around 300 officers since the start of 2018 after citizens reported misconduct, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said.
There have been at least 45,000 complaints about the actions of police officers this year, Kolokoltsev said.
Following inquiries initiated by the reports, 300 officers lost their jobs, and 65 were fired over “loss of trust,” he said.
Some of them, among other things, provided cover for the drug trade, the minister said, adding that every such case is “an emergency” for the police.
Also on Friday, new research revealed that the level of trust in police among the general population has dropped 10 percent since 2017.
A total of 57 percent of those surveyed by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTSIOM) expressed confidence in police.
Last year, VTSIOM reported a record 67-percent level of trust in police in Russia, which was a drastic increase compared to the mid-2010s, when the numbers stood at less than 50 percent.
Russian law enforcement has recently been rocked by several major scandals, the latest of which revolving around the rape of a young female detective by three district police department heads at police headquarters in the city of Ufa.
READ MORE: Drunken cop rams his BMW into grocery store & flees (VIDEO)
In early November, a drunk officer in Altay Region rammed his posh SUV into a grocery store and escaped from the scene.
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