The State Duma adopted a law on the exclusion of aggravating circumstances in the punishment of police officers

The State Duma of Russia adopted a law on the exclusion from the number of aggravating circumstances the commission of an intentional crime by a police officer. Now the document will be submitted for approval to the Federation Council.

The bill was developed and submitted to the Parliament by four members of the Duma faction of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Yuri Afonin, deputies Denis Parfenov, Yuri Sinelshchikov and Nikolai Kolomeitsev, follows from the data posted in the database of bills of the State Duma.

The document proposes to exclude from Art. 63 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Circumstances Aggravating Punishment”, paragraph “o”, that such is the commission of an intentional crime by an employee of the internal affairs body. The amendment appeared in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in 2010 as part of the “police reform”, the corresponding law was signed by Dmitry Medvedev, who then served as president of Russia.

The communist deputies considered that the status of an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the accused should not be considered an aggravating circumstance, since this is “discrimination against the police” in comparison with employees of other state bodies. The authors of the bill drew attention to the fact that the rule of law in Russia is also provided by employees of the courts, the prosecutor’s office, the FSB, and others, but this paragraph does not apply to them. Also, the authors of the bill in an explanatory note emphasized that at the moment in Russia “less than 1% of crimes are committed by law enforcement officers and less than a third of a percent by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”

Alexander Kislov