Aleh Vouchak: If All Policemen Take Polygraph Test, There Will Be Nobody To Work In Police

The police experience serious problem with personnel even without the Polygraph.

Human right defender, former investigator at the public prosecutor’s office of Minsk Aleh Vouchak has told Radio Racyja why all the force structures officers should go through testing with the Polygraph.

After the resonant tragedy when drunk acting head of the Baranavichy traffic police ran over a woman and killed her, the Minister of Internal Affairs Ihar Shunevich said that a third of the traffic police officers who were tested on a lie detector, didn’t pass the test and their contracts would not be renewed.

According to Shunevich, each officer who will be approaching the contract renewal will go through this procedure.

- It would be better to test the interior ministry’s officials with the Polygraph not at the time their contracts are due for renewal, but before the employment. However, they decided to test the traffic policemen now, the results of the testing cannot be considered direct proofs that an officer, for example, takes bribes or drinks to excess. These are indirect facts, so they don’t even have the right to fire them. The Polygraph is one of the components of the check of the psychological state of an officer. Still, let them do it, may be this is the way they want to reform the Interior Ministry’s system. However, this testing remains unlikely to influence the systems built by the hawks.

- Why are they testing only the traffic policemen?

- I don’t understand this either. If you start something like that, it would be fair to test all the policemen. Starting from the superiors, because, as they say, a fish rots from its head. And the orders to the ordinary policemen come from the above.

- The Interior Minister complained about the sometimes biased attitude to the police from the side of the independent media, the society…

- Such complaints always come when policemen meddle into some scandalous or corruption-related incidents. Of course it all leaks into the internet and it’s not just something some people made up, but the real facts. So why be offended by the mirror? If the policemen do not discredit themselves, why would anyone do it? Still, however, the police officials probably think that the best defence is offence. Besides, if all policemen take a Polygraph test, there will be no one to work in police. And the police, as far as I know, already experience a big problem with personnel.