On February 24 2011 my brother was driving outside St Petersburg Russia. He was stopped by police and accused of being drunk. They explained that if he would pay them $50,000 rubles (about $1,700), they would let him go. My brother was sober and refused.
These policemen let my brother go but followed him to my father's country house. There they demanded money from my father and when he refused to pay grabbed him and started pushing him around. He is 72 year old. My dad collapsed from a stroke. He hit his head and suffered bleeding in his brain.
Without providing any help, those policemen dragged him into the house and dumped him there to die.
A group of neighbors observed the entire episode but were afraid to intervene. They called an ambulance.
Unfortunately the story doesn't end here.
The policemen took my brother to a hospital to administer a blood alcohol test. There they brutally beat him. Two nurses observed, but when my brother asked for help one of them said, "we didn't see anything" and the nurses left the room.
After the hospital treatment, my brother was taken to the police station and was given a letter to sign declaring that he fell down the stairs and hurt himself so that the policemen could cover themselves for beating him. He refused to sign it. One of the policemen then took a large bag of a white powder from his drawer and said that if he did not sign the release, that they would claim that the bag of powder was found in my brother's pocket. He would be going to prison for a long time.
He signed it.
My father is in intensive care. His prognosis is bad. If he lives, he will probably be paralyzed.
People should band together and find a top notch lawyer and help this family. These "Police" should be immediately removed from the force with pay, pending investigations.
ReplyDeletePutin and Medvedev have their hands full making billions for themselves and their cronies. They don't have time to fix things. I wonder though, if foreign business people who come there to do deals would do so knowing what could happen to them...
ReplyDeleteRussia is a medieval society. Here in the US when the local or fed government needs to collect revenue to fill their pockets, they are atleast civilized enough to present it as a tax hike or toll. In Russia they don't hide a thing. The police are underpaid, so they brutalized the local people they protect to line their pockets. The funny thing is that I have seen folks there brutalized by the police and then be told they must pay a "tax" for the brutality to stop. Tatiana's family's only recourse would be to find a KRISHA. The whole legal system is corrupt and the only way people get protection is just like the old middle ages system. Find a king or KRISHA and pay him protection money. It would still cost money, but at least they wouldn't be brutalized. Tatiana could go to the international press to expose working of the Russian police system, or the UN, but it probably would only put her family into further danger. They would have to leave the country. ANd believe me, foreign businessmen are preyed upon everyday in Russian and they get rolled. But just like the local people, they just have to suck it up. And the wealth to be had is too good for US companies to pull out.
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