Implementing "Community Policing"



Canadian police are deployed in Ukraine in two separate, multi-year missions related to "reforming front-line police forces in Ukraine as well as providing strategic advice on broader security sector reform, with the long-term goal of contributing to the rule of law, minimizing social unrest, maintaining security and improving the relationship between citizens and police."[1] One operation consists of working directly with the Ukrainian National Police and the other with the European Union Assistance Mission for Civilian Security Sector Reform (EUAM Ukraine). The Canadian government has allotted $8.1 million for the missions.

The acting head of Ukraine's National Police is Vadym Troyan, formerly deputy chief of the National Police and head of Kiev police. Until his appointment in Kiev in 2014, Troyan was deputy commander of the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia accused of torture and war crimes, and a member of the group "Patriot of Ukraine," the paramilitary wing of the fascist "Social-Nationalist Assembly."

The Canadian operations are focused on implementing a "community policing" or "community-based policing" model as opposed to what media are referring to as an "old Soviet top-down model." A March 16 Winnipeg Free Press article gives an overview of the four-week course led by Canadian trainers:

"The Ukrainian officers spend the first few days in a classroom before moving into the gym for hands-on training, where they're taught everything from proper handcuffing to use of physical force against a suspect. From the gym they move to scenario-based training, where instructors play a variety of roles and teach officers how to deal with everything from an aggressive individual holed up in a government office to someone intoxicated in the park."

"Canadian police officers are also trying to introduce the concept of community-based policing to Ukraine, including helping set up a neighbourhood-watch-style program in the city of Vinnytsia[the political base of Ukrainian President and food product oligarch Petro Poroshenko]. But as[RCMP officer]Sarah Drummond tells me, it isn't easy to shift the mindset of Ukrainian officers away from the more traditional, top-down model of policing to one that asks them to be proactive and form strong relationships and partnerships with their communities."

Community Policing Model

"Community policing" or "community-based policing" is a reactionary theory of crime prevention and policing based on the U.S. "broken windows theory." The latter was proposed by two conservative academics, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982 and "links disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent occurrences of serious crime."[2]The theory was subsequently put into practice by many of the most notorious and racist U.S. police departments such as the NYPD. The "broken windows theory" called for a shift in focus from solving serious crimes to aggressive enforcement against petty offences such as graffiti, toll or fare evasion, public intoxication or urination, panhandling and squeegeeing under the questionable premise that this will also reduce the occurrence of serious crimes.[3]

The program of "community policing" therefore focuses the resources of police officers on "crime prevention" through the broken windows approach, as opposed to the investigation of crimes. It also calls for close collaboration with "community members" and "leaders" through direct relationships with police. "Community policing" became U.S. policy on a national scale under the Clinton administration in 1994 with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 creating an Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) within the Justice Department. In a 2014 document the COPS office explained, "In his 1994 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton pledged an additional 100,000 community policing officers to reduce violence and prevent crime in America's neighbourhoods" and stated that the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act put this into practice.[4]

Implementation of "Community Policing" in Ukraine

In July 2015 Ukraine launched a new police force, under the guidance of deputy interior minister Eka Zguladze, the former Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia. Zguladze is one of several former ministers in the pro-U.S. Georgian government of Mikheil Saakashvili, including Saakashvili himself, to be given Ukrainian citizenship by President Poroshenko so they could be put in charge of major portfolios. Saakashvili was the appointed Governor of Odessa until November 7.

The new police force received $15 million in funding from the U.S., along with funds from Canada, Australia, Japan and other countries. The force was referred to as the "patrol police" due to their focus on a visible presence to prevent and punish petty crime, and later became called the National Police. This force was initially trained by the U.S. and features U.S.-style, U.S.-made uniforms. The new police salary was reported as three times the salary of the old police force, called the Militsiya , allegedly to deter corruption.

In line with the focus of the "community policing" model, a December 2015 article in Foreign Policy states, "To date, Ukraine's new police have been focused on a myriad of petty matters: smoking in public places, homeless people sleeping in tourist areas, and cars parking around bus stops. But the new policing model in Ukrainian cities does not explain how bigger and more violent crimes are prevented through policing small things."[5]The new police received 10 weeks of training, "roughly half the length of a basic training course received by a police officer in the U.S. state of New York and a fraction of the four or more years that an officer of the old Ukrainian militsiya would have spent studying," a September 2015 Foreign Policy item reports.[6]

The first chief of the new National Police was Khatia Dekanoidze, another former Georgian cabinet minister. After her resignation on November 14, citing the fact that "unfortunately, my powers and will were not sufficient for sharp changes," the position went to the neo-Nazi Vadym Troyan. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov stated that Troyan would continue the process of police reform and recruitment of officers.[7]

Subsequently, Troyan in an October 8 article he authored in Ukraine's Weekly Mirror cited significant increases in recorded crimes such as theft, robbery, fraud and violent attacks, and blamed this on the presence of internally-displaced persons from fighting in Ukraine's east. Increases in robberies could be correlated to concentrations of refugees, Troyan argued. Citing the large number of police officers who stayed in their positions following Crimea's decision to join the Russian Federation and the proclamations of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Troyan praised the role of the private militias organized to suppress resistance. It was from these groups that the leadership of the new National Police came, he said.[8]

The Kyiv Post on November 18 reported, "Troyan, who is reported in charge of all surveillance at the National Police, has been accused of conducting surveillance over journalist Pavlo Sheremet, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in central Kyiv on July 20."[9]

Among those sending police trainers to Ukraine is the Toronto Police Service (TPS). The TPS is widely criticized for its practice of harassing and "carding" national minority youth, and has been disgraced in recent years by police killings of Sammy Yatim and Andrew Loku. An October 4, 2016 article by the TPS titled, "Community Policing in Ukraine" informed that Sergeant Dale Corra and Constable Gregory Boltyansky were sent to Ukraine to design community policing programs. "Community policing is new to them and we are starting from scratch," Corra said.

Commenting on the training Canada is providing, Edmonton Police Sgt. Colleen Mooney was quoted in a March 22, 2016 CBC News report:

"The vast majority of[the recruits]were policing in conflict zones across the eastern border, so knowing that they were going back to that, after getting to know them, was difficult for me. [...] They're basically brand new police officers that have been identified as strong leaders during their short tenure with Ukraine patrol police. In Edmonton they wouldn't even be out of recruit training yet."[10]

This further indicates that Canada's police training mission constitutes, like its military training mission, intervention in the civil war in Ukraine. Canadians should demand answers from the Canadian government as to what is the nature of this mission. Furthermore, discredited anti-people theories such as "community policing," taught by police forces which are in serious disrepute in the eyes of Canadians, will not bring security or the rule of law to the people of Ukraine.

Notes

1. RCMP Current Operations: Ukraine.

2. "Broken Windows Theory," Encyclopedia Britannica. The theory was explained by pop pseudo-sociologist Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point as follows:

"If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes."

3. Maggie Penman, Renee Khlar, Tara Boyle, Jennifer Schmidt, Shankar Vedantam, "How A Theory Of Crime And Policing Was Born, And Went Terribly Wrong," NPR, Hidden Brain . November 1, 2016.

4. COPS states, "Community policing promotes organizational strategies that support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime. Rather than simply responding to crimes once they have been committed, community policing concentrates on preventing crime and eliminating the atmosphere of fear it creates. Earning the trust of the community and making those individuals shareholders in their own safety enables law enforcement to better understand and address both the needs of the community and the factors that contribute to crime." ("The COPS Office: 20 Years of Community Oriented Policing," U.S. Department of Justice, 2014.)

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 became notorious for, on top of dramatically increasing the number of police officers on the streets, contributing to mass incarceration of Black youth in the U.S. The Act was the context for the now-infamous comments by Hillary Clinton in 1996 calling Black youth "super-predators." Clinton said, "We're making some progress. Much of it is related to the initiative called 'community policing.' Because we have finally gotten more police officers on the street. That was one of the goals that the president had when he pushed the crime bill that was passed in 1994." A few lines later Clinton referred to "an organized effort against gangs," saying, "they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators -- no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel."

Hillary Clinton took the term "superpredator" from academic John Dilulio Jr. who in 1995 wrote an article "The Coming of the Super-Predator." He stated, "There is even some evidence that juveniles are doing homicidal violence in 'wolf packs.' Indeed, a 1993 study found that juveniles committed about a third of all homicides against strangers, often murdering their victim in groups of two or more. Violent youth crime, like all serious crime, is pre-dominantly intra-racial, not interfacial. The surge in violent youth crime has been most acute among black inner-city males."

Canada's Department of Justice describes the shift to "community policing" in the country, noting that by the early 1990s this model was adopted in words if not in practice by police forces across the country. It states that "Traditional policing adopts the crime control model as its primary orientation. Community policing incorporates a mixture of order maintenance and community service (Wood, 1996)."

5. Erica Marat, "The Problem with Ukrainian Police Reform," Foreign Policy, December 29, 2015.

6. Masha Gessen, "The Cops Who Would Save a Country," Foreign Policy, September 8, 2015.

7. Arsen Avakov, Ukraine's Interior Minister is one of a number of prominent figures associated with the fascist Ukrainian National Front party created on March 31, 2014 following the U.S.-backed coup. Its first 10 candidates for election in 2014 included:

- Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the first Prime Minister of the coup government (it collapsed in July 2014);

- Tetiana Chornovol, member of "nationalist" groups and widow of a slain neo-Nazi Azov Battalion member;

- Oleksandr Turchynov, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine and the acting President of Ukraine immediately following the coup;

- Andriy Parubiy, founder of the fascist Social-National Party of Ukraine and former leader of its paramilitary group, Patriot of Ukraine, now Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament;

- Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, author of attempts to repeal Ukrainian laws defending minority languages;

- Yuriy Bereza, commander of the Dnipro-1 battalion accused of blocking humanitarian aid to eastern Ukraine in December 2014. Later, as an MP, Bereza threatened to "burn down Crimea, with all of its residents if needed."8. , " ," gazeta.dt.ua. October 8, 2016.

9. Sheremet, a journalist and liberal critic of the governments of Russia and Belarus, wrote his last blog post on March 20, 2016 about the possibility of another coup in Ukraine, this one led by the Azov battalion, the former militia of National Police chief Troyan. Sheremet wrote:

"We need such volunteers as Biletskyi's Azov or Teteruk's Myrotvorets fighters to be our baseline, not the strange camouflaged people who are currently blocking the work of the anti-corruption prosecutors under the Solomyanskyi District Court for Kiev City."

10. Wallis Snowdon, "Edmonton police officer takes expertise to Ukraine," CBC News, March 22, 2016.

Along with the new "Patrol Police" or National Police, various volunteer paramilitary groups tasked by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine are referred to as "Special Tasks Patrol Police. These "Patrol Police" consist of privately-funded volunteer militias operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, carrying out "anti-terror" operations in the east of the country and taking part in combat operations in the Keiv government's war against the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. The quote from CBC News that the recruits "were policing in conflict zones across the eastern border" suggests overlap between the new National Police and the "Special Tasks" police militias, or that Canada is training both.

(TML Weekly Supplement No. 23, June 24, 2017)