How many police officers are there in the world. Number of police in Russia, USA and other countries. An overabundance of police in the Oryol region and a general understaffing
The citadel and its guards
The history of the security forces
Russia is a country of security forces. By the number of policemen alone per 100,000 people, the Russian Federation ranks first in the world. There are 5.5 police officers for every thousand Russians. Even in China (2012 data), this figure is only 3.2, and in Germany, for example, it is 2.9. In Israel, which is constantly at war, it is also 2.9. At the same time, the police are by no means the only representatives of the security class, which in the 2000s became the main beneficiary of the regime, at the same time its support and beneficiary.
During all these 12 years that we are talking about, the number of armed men in uniform and the federal budget expenditures for their maintenance have constantly grown at the same time. During these years, there was a division of the general power class into various interest groups, into various clans. Competition or direct struggle between these clans by the end of the 2000s turned into some kind of parody of political competition, some kind of its replacement, a rather bad replacement, it must be admitted (“Sand is a bad substitute for oats”). Nevertheless, it is such a surrogate for a system of checks and balances. Instead of public control, instead of mutual containment of the branches of power in the Russian political situation, we have competition from the security forces.
Who makes up this armed bureaucracy, how many of these people are there? So, who are the enforcers, who make up this class?
Ministry of the Interior
The most numerous power structure in Russia is the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 2005, its staff consisted of more than 820 thousand people; in 2015, the number of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs exceeded one million. The Ministry of the Interior has undergone one of the most ambitious reforms of the 2000s. This is the so-called reform of the police, in fact, transferred it from the police to the police. The first steps in this direction were taken back in 2009 as a reaction to a number of high-profile crimes committed by police officers.
Many remember the case of Major Evsyukov, the man who opened fire in a supermarket in the south of Moscow. It was supposed to simultaneously reduce the number of members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and increase appropriations for the payment of remuneration to employees. In 2010, the forthcoming police reform was announced, and in August 2010, a draft Law on Police was published in the public domain, which was intended to replace the current Law on Police.
He set himself a number of goals: first of all, increasing the efficiency of the police, increasing the confidence of citizens in them, reducing the number and increasing the salaries of employees. Indeed, during the reform that began in 2011, the number of employees of the internal affairs bodies was reduced by 22%. However, as we can see, by 2015 the staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs had grown again and became larger than in any previous years. Indeed, the police began to receive more money, in addition, a number of measures were introduced to increase the openness of the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The most famous of these is the introduction of badges, which police officers are required to wear.
At the same time, starting in 2001, there was a process of reassignment of regional power structures and specific regional departments of internal affairs from the governors to the president. The essence of the process was to build a single vertical for the protection of order in the broad sense of the word, if we are talking about the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and to subordinate it precisely to the federal center. The exceptions in this regard, which continue to have their own power resources, are the national republics. First of all, the republics of the North Caucasus, especially Chechnya.
For now, let's fix the situation that we came to in 2012: the police have been reformed, their numbers have been somewhat reduced, and, let's say, they have become, to some extent, more open. Based on sociological data, we cannot say that the level of trust in the police has somehow increased, but the power vertical has been completely reassigned to the president.
FSB, FSO and others
The Ministry of Internal Affairs is, of course, not the only power structure, but the most numerous. As of 2005, about 190,000 people work in the prosecutor's office, and 53,000 in the Prosecutor General's Office. The Federal Migration Service has about 30 thousand people. An extremely numerous, rich and fairly independent power agency is the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which has been operating since 1991, since its inception, under the leadership of one minister. In 2005, 350 thousand people work there, in 2015 - more than 370 thousand. About 340 thousand - in the Ministry of Justice. And the Federal Drug Control Service, created in 2003 (and, looking ahead, liquidated in 2016), has 33,000 people in 2005. For 2015, so to speak, by its sunset, there are already 40 thousand.
How many people work in the actual special services - the FSO, the FSB and military intelligence - because of the secrecy regime, we cannot say for sure. According to various sources, the FSB in the 2000s is about 120 thousand people. If we add there the employees of the border service, which became part of the FSB, then it will turn out to be more than 200 thousand people. According to various estimates, since the beginning of the 2000s, the staffing of the FSB, excluding the border service, has increased by 1.5–2 times. We see about 20 thousand people in the foreign intelligence service, but again, we don’t know for sure. The FSO employs from 10,000 to 25,000 people.
The number of staff members of law enforcement agencies, despite local reductions, or, more precisely, talk about such reductions, has been steadily growing over the past 15 years. In the same way, federal budget expenditures on the National Security and Law Enforcement sections, which are responsible for feeding the class of security officials, also grew. Over the years of observation, this figure as a percentage of GDP has never fallen below 1.3%. As a percentage of the total number of federal budget expenditures, it has always been more than 8, and (with some decrease in the crisis year of 2008) after 2009 it has been steadily growing. By 2012, we are approaching a budget with about 11% of the money going to spending related to national security and law enforcement.
Is it a lot or a little? For comparison: in the United States, the consolidated budget spending on security is about 1.5% of GDP. This is 0.19% of federal budget expenditures. As we can see, this is a figure that we have not come close to in all these years. So, the Russian security forces during these 12 years have been consuming an increasing and increasing share of budget expenditures.
At the same time, the so-called closed part of budget expenditures is growing. What it is? The federal budget, like any other law, is considered by the State Duma. It is considered in plenary sessions and published accordingly. Part of the expenses that are classified as secret are considered behind closed doors; they are not discussed at plenary meetings. They are considered by a special commission of the State Duma. It includes the chairman of the budget committee, the chairman of the security committee and a number of other deputies. Basically, these are former employees of the special services and the Ministry of Defense, who were usually there, deputy ministers - people of this level.
What is the percentage of these closed expenses, that is, those that are not subject to public review? From 2005 to 2012 - from 10 to 11%. This is not necessarily the cost of special services. For example, for some reason, capital construction costs have also become classified, and part of the housing and communal services costs are also closed. If in 2012 this is 11.7% of the budget, in 2014 it is already 14.2%, in 2015 - 16.7%, by the end of 2015 - a fantastic figure of 20.2%. So, more than 20% of the federal budget by 2015 is distributed behind closed doors.
The higher the influence of the special services and security forces in general on domestic and foreign policy, the more money they take for themselves, the greater the influence of their specific mentality, which involves considering the outside world as a set of threats and challenges.
Army
For specific reasons of Russian political history, our special services and law enforcement agencies are political actors. The army, until very recently, was not one of them. The roots of this specific phenomenon go back to the period after the Great Patriotic War, in particular, to the stage when there was a struggle with Marshal Zhukov and his entourage precisely in order to prevent the appearance of the army as a separate political subject, as an actor in the political process. This state of affairs has begun to change somewhat in recent years, but this is already beyond the scope of our course. How is that balance maintained between the competing security forces, the maintenance of which is one of the main tasks and goals of the supreme power?
The competition of the security forces
The security forces have both a power resource and control over entire regions, areas of economic activity. This is not only vulgarly understood racketeering in the spirit of the 90s, this is already a much deeper penetration of power actors into the economic fabric, which allowed, for example, Olga Romanova, a person who understands this area, to say that real Russian entrepreneurs are siloviki or siloviki are real Russian entrepreneurs. We cannot say exactly what volume of economic turnover is directly or indirectly controlled by representatives of law enforcement agencies or their beneficiaries, but we can simply fix the fact that this penetration is deep enough.
One of the main hidden but defining plots of domestic politics in the 2000s was the rivalry between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB for control over the flows passing through customs. What was the task of the supreme power in this situation? Not to have one definite winner who could control this clearing entirely, not to have some mega-enforcer who could defeat everyone else, or even not to grow two opposing towers that remain alone with each other, crushing all other pockets of resistance. For this reason, power structures in Russia are a constant subject of reform.
New structures emerge from them, these new structures are then disbanded, and the leadership changes. All this activity, if we look at it from a distance of ten years, has as its goal the maintenance of this complex dynamic balance. In 2011, what was the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office was separated from the Prosecutor General's Office into a separate structure, the Investigative Committee, which becomes a competitor to the Prosecutor's Office and has been living in the fight against it all these years. All these new structures begin to fight for authority, for resources, for control. Accordingly, this struggle does not allow any of them to intensify in any way.
So, let's fix the situation that we saw. We are not talking about the fact that some specific Chekists seized power in Russia. We are talking, I repeat, about a wide, extensive, rich and influential class, in Marxist language, this very power bureaucracy. We have an economic bureaucracy, there is a media bureaucracy, there is a financial bureaucracy - all these are people who, to one degree or another, work for the state. But it is precisely this armed power bureaucracy that becomes the core of the bureaucratic class.
The number of policemen is growing. Why they worry is understandable, because of this it is difficult for them to destroy Russia, and this is how they justify their zero exhaust. Say, well, what can we do against such forces. Surprisingly, they lie in this, as in everything, in fact, the number of policemen is declining.
Comrade with a speaking surname foreigners writes
In Russia today, 914,500 people are on the staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This is the third largest police force in the world (of course, after China - 1.6 million people) and India (1.5 million). At the same time, in terms of the number of police officers per 100,000 inhabitants, China (120 people) and India (128 people) lag behind Russia (623 people) by about five times. It is worth noting that all developed countries lag behind us in this indicator: in the USA, the corresponding figure is 256 people, in the EU countries - from 300 to 360. Ahead, apart from exotic islands and dwarf states, are only our closest friends - Belarus and Serbia (and it is not clear how South Sudan got into this company). In the days of the "authoritarian" USSR, 623,000 people were in the service of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs and the rate of "police" was almost three times lower.
It is not clear where the figure of 914,500 people came from, the number of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs at 623,000 people is even more of a mystery. Numbers are born from the head, the usual statement, I'm kind of an expert. Here's an expert, how do you know this? a familiar taxi driver said. You don't even know the staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In no year did the figure 914500 exist.
If you go to the UN website and go through the tabs crime and criminal justice statistics - Total Police Personnel and open the sign Total police officers at the national level over the years in Russia, we will see police figures per 100,000 population. It also gives the number of the police
Where do they come from? From the annual staff list of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Moreover, the staffing is reduced every year. In this staffing table, there is a number of policemen
2009 1,325,000 people
2011 1,280,000 people
2012 1,106,472 people, including employees of the internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation - 907,630 people, of which police officers - 782,106 people
2015 1,003,172 people.
2016 904 871 people
2017 894 thousand 871 people, of which 746 thousand 859 employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation; of which 643 thousand police officers. This is already 438 people per 100,000 people.
Secondly, for example, the fight against drugs, this is a separate department, for example in the United States and in most countries it belongs to the Ministry of Justice. We have it in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
We will throw out the Federal Drug Control Service from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the number of police officers will be reduced below 400 per 100,000. And what is 300-odd police officers per 100,000 of the population, this is a common European indicator.
In Russia, alternatively gifted people like Burkina draw funny pictures, mistaking the staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the number of police officers. Where do they get the number of policemen in the USSR, not knowing the number of Soviet policemen, no one knows. No one knows how many police were in the USSR. There is only one number on the site Chekist.ru As of May 15, 1953, the number of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (excluding police) was 1,095,678 people, even this number of militia without militia. There are simply no other numbers.
Reductions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs take place annually. Last year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was reduced by 100,000 people. This year they reduced by 10,000 people, all of them fell on 55,000 traffic police officers, it was reduced by 20%. In just 10 years, the staff list of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been reduced by 50%, and the number of Russian police officers has decreased by about the same amount.
But in the minds of Russophobes, the legend of a growing police state still lives on. Are they scaring themselves?
Let's move on to other power departments.
However, of course, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, although the most numerous, is not the only security service in the country. Separately from it, there is the National Guard, numbering up to 400,000 people.
Russophobes express even greater feelings about the National Guard of Russia. Nobody knows its size. Some say 300,000, HER leader says that there will be 340,000 sometime. Russophobes boldly estimate the National Guard at 400 thousand. And at least some comparison with the size of the US National Guard, which in 2009 was 467,587 people. And of course, no reminders of the number of internal troops of the USSR. These are those with raspberry shoulder straps. Everyone has already forgotten, except for the Soviet Army, there were other troops of 4 million people: the railway troops of the USSR, the border troops of the USSR. And from the heels of the military branches up to the pipeline troops of the USSR, related to the USSR Armed Forces. There were also VVeshniks. Now these Soviet people reproach Russia for the swollen state of the security forces. 
The Russian Guard is the former troops of the VV, with a different name
In the United States, where the entire police force, the National Guard, the personnel of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation do not exceed 1.2 million people, the security forces make up only 0.78% of the total number of employees, which in March 2017 exceeded 153 million people
It is difficult to compare directly different organizations with different structures. In the United States, there are 17 federal intelligence agencies where, according to some estimates, 854,000 civilian specialists, military personnel and private agents work. How many scouts were counted with us. If you take away the FSB minus the border guards. Well, 100,000 people. At best.
Is it possible to compare the security forces from the US Treasury Department, which provides security for the American president, with our Treasury Department. In the United States, each department has security officials, for example, the Department of Justice, in addition to the fight against drugs, it has a service of federal marshals.
And Russophobes take a couple of American departments and compare them with all Russian security forces. Moreover, in the United States, the federals have their own network, while the states do not have their own centralized department. For example, we have the Ministry of Emergency Situations under 300,000 people. In the USA (FEMA) 7.5 thousand people. But this is the federal office of the organization and offices by district. No one knows how many people are struggling with state of emergency.
Today, the Russian law enforcement agencies have reached, in my opinion, a critical moment in their development. Over the past 15 years, they have more than doubled in number, with a declining number of able-bodied citizens in the country. Their funding increased by more than 5.5 times.
So where is the increase then? Growth of funding by 5.5 times. With inflation since 2000 at 500%, it is not. There is no increase in the number of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there is a reduction of 50%. For other structures, there is no dynamics from the word at all.
First of all, it is worth remembering domestic officials. Their number almost doubled from 1999 to 2017 - from 780 thousand to 1.37 million people.
Where do Russophobes get the numbers from? not a single one is true. And if you subtract the municipalities annexed in 2006 since 1999, their number has fallen from 780 (if this is of course the correct figure) to 578 thousand people.
Everyone is downsizing except the Army
In Russia, there are up to 5 million people in law enforcement agencies. Almost every eighth man in the country is a security official. Expenses for the army, police, secret police make up more than 30% of the federal budget and a significant part of the budgets of the regions. Russia continues to be a Prussian-style system, founded under Peter I.
Russia has always been considered a militocracy - a state where everything related to the war was the main interest.
The ancestor of Russia of the "new model" Peter I simply took and stupidly wrote off the state structure from the Prussian model. The choice of the Prussian path then, in the early 1700s, was not accidental - it was considered the most successful mobilization option, which made it possible to quickly create an army, the military-industrial complex and logistics enterprises serving them. The state was "sharpened" for war - and this "sharpening" remained here for the next 300 years. All other branches of the economy were considered as an auxiliary function of the war. A school is needed so that a soldier is literate, medicine is needed so that a soldier can be quickly put into service after being wounded, statistics and records are needed so that recruits are better taken into account. And trade is needed - in order to build ships and guns with the proceeds. War for the sake of war.
It would seem that in a “democratic Russia” of the Yeltsin-Putin type, the country would have to get rid of birth trauma. But no, the main priority in the country remains the same model laid down by Peter I - the army and control over the points of export of raw materials. Only now, instead of the ports where the grain was reloaded, Her Majesty the Trumpet has become. All these sticks, workdays, shagistics, a person as a cog in a machine - everything that was valuable under Frederick and Catherine the Great continued to live in our System. With a slight difference - all sorts of policemen, secret police officers and jailers were added to the army.
Thus, the staff of the penitentiary system (jailers) is 347.5 thousand people. The total number of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs last year was 1.325 million people, of which "non-federal" - 39% of the personnel. In the same structure, there are 200 thousand employees in the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is impossible to find out the number of the FSB - information on the service is classified. According to scattered data, it ranges from 80 to 120 thousand people, not counting the employees of the Border Service. Together with them, it exceeds 200 thousand people. The number of employees of the SVR is also secret - according to various estimates, together with agents it is up to 20 thousand people. The number of the FSO is also classified, although the media give figures from 10,000 to 25,000 people.
The Interpreter's Blog has already written that modern Russia, compared to the Stalinist USSR of the 1953 model, is a super-police state. Taking into account the difference in population, the FSB today has almost 2 times more employees, the Ministry of Internal Affairs - by 60%.
The Russian customs service has 68 thousand people.
The staff of prosecutors is 63 thousand people (of which about 20 thousand work in the Investigative Committee).
The Ministry of Emergency Situations employs 371 thousand people (including 19.5 thousand Civil Defense soldiers), and another 280 thousand work in the fire department.
The staff of the judiciary consists of 23,172 federal judges of courts of general jurisdiction and 6,779 justices of the peace. Total almost 30 thousand people.
The FSKN (drug police) employs 40,000 Russians.
The Federal Bailiff Service has 23,000 people, however, Deputy Chief Bailiff of the Russian Federation Voronin admitted that the service is allowed to have 60,000 employees (which means that in a year or two the staff will be understaffed, there is no doubt).
The courier service is considered to be quite scanty in number - only 4475 people.
166,000 people are employed in the Tax Service (although they are not exactly security forces).
The most numerous is the composition of the Ministry of Defense - 1.16 million military personnel plus 860 thousand civil servants. However, the number of military personnel under the contract is slightly more than 55% (of which 12% are soldiers and sergeants). Thus, the number of professional military is 638 thousand people. With the "military without shoulder straps" (the same civil servants of the Moscow Region) - 1.5 million people.
The federal migration service employs 34.3 thousand people.
In addition, the “civilian armies” of state corporations can also be attributed to the security forces. So, the paramilitary guards of the Russian Railways alone are 80 thousand people. And together with the "armies" of Gazprom, Transneft, Rosatom, etc. their total number may exceed 150 thousand people.
Thus, the total number of security forces in Russia is 4.6-4.65 million people.
Is it a lot or a little? The total working-age population of Russia is 87 million people, of which about 42 million are men. Excluding the disabled, there are about 38 million people in places of detention. Thus, there are about 12% of the security forces in the country, or every eighth man.
Now let's see how much it costs to maintain such an army of security forces.
Expenses for the department of the Ministry of Defense for 2011 - 1 trillion. 517 billion rubles.
For law enforcement - 1 trillion. 56 billion rubles.
There is also the so-called. "secret part of federal budget expenditures". It includes the content of the FSB, SVR and other special services. In 2010, these expenses amounted to 1 trillion. 40 billion rubles.
Thus, the total expenditure on these three items amounted to 3 trillion. 613 billion rubles. From the total federal budget of 9.9 trillion. rubles, this is approximately 36% of all expenses.
However, one should not be deceived by the finality of this figure - the costs of the security forces are also included in the “peaceful” articles of the federal budget. So, there are secret articles in the "social" sections. They appeared there because in 2005 the World Bank's recommendation was adopted to withdraw “extra” expenditures from the “defense” item: military hospitals - to “health care”, schools in military camps - to “education”, etc. In total, this is another tens of billions of rubles.
In addition, the costs of the secret police and the police are included in the regional budgets. Here is just one example. In the Magadan Region, regional budget expenditures for 2010 on national security and law enforcement activities amounted to 630.5 million rubles, including 207.5 million rubles on internal affairs bodies (the total budget of the region is 15.3 billion rubles) .
As a result, dozens more, or even more than a hundred billion rubles, are running up under the article “maintenance of the security forces” throughout the country. At the same time, there are also various extra-budgetary and "public" funds - the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the FSO, etc. How much money accumulates in them - no one knows. For example, only one state-owned company, Transneft, “donated” only two such power funds (among them, the Fund for Assistance to Employees and Veterans of the Federal Security Service “Kremlin-9”) 1 billion rubles.
In principle, such expenditures of the Russian budget are comparable to those of the US budget ($1.6 trillion out of $3.83 trillion; see chart below).
By 20 percent, and the new Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev is already talking about the need to reconsider the issue of the number of personnel. Although we already have many more police officers per capita than in other countries. There is nothing to compare with the former USSR: then there were 2.1 policemen per thousand inhabitants. In modern Russia - 7.7. At the same time, the Soviet Uncle Styopa repaired traffic lights and helped the kids, and the current law enforcement officers groan from congestion and the “cane” system.
So how many police officers should there be in the country? Mikhail Makov, the chief expert-specialist of the Organizational and Staff Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, is just dealing with this issue. Clicking the calculator, we calculate the percentage of the police and the population in the West. Italy is closest to us (see table).
The All-Russian Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and all educational institutions of the ministry are now working on the optimal number of police, - says Mikhail Makov. - And it turns out that if you give employees all the days off, vacations, time off for reinforcements and duty, then there should be no less, but more police officers than now. For some services - twice.
That is, it is necessary to return the reduced 20 percent? I ask.
So the question is not worth it, - Mikhail Makov answers, - but we must understand that in any case we will have more policemen than in other countries. For example, because of the size of the territory.
We again calculate the ratio of the number of policemen and the area of countries. And here we are ahead of the rest: almost 15 square kilometers per staff unit. But in Italy - 1.1 square meters. kilometers to guard the order - before lunch you will go around without straining.
I was in one of the remote areas of Chukotka, - continues Mikhail Makov, - the area is larger than Belgium. And the population is only 5.5 thousand people. 1.5 thousand live in the regional center, the rest - in seven villages. There are no roads. In each village - according to the district, and in the regional center - a department. There are 36 employees in total. It turns out 1 police officer per 152 inhabitants. Well, how else to keep order there?
But the USSR had even more territory - I do not give up - 35 kilometers per policeman ...
Then the entire totalitarian apparatus was aimed at maintaining law and order: party committees, trade union committees, voluntary squads, Mikhail Makov objects. “So a bigger police force is the price we pay for our freedom.
"DANCE" FROM CRIMES
Not so long ago, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev noted that during the reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the principle of police accessibility was violated. In rural areas, departments were reduced or even abolished. And now people sometimes have to travel hundreds of kilometers to the police. The minister instructed the working group on further reforming the Ministry of Internal Affairs to reconsider the issue of the number of personnel.
Mikhail Pashkin, head of the unofficial police union, is now part of this working group.
Well you compared! he exclaimed when I showed the figures for Russia and the USSR. - In Moscow in Soviet times there were one or two murders a month. Now compared to those years - a real war.
In the United States, the crime situation is also not sugar, but there are fewer policemen there ...
Of course, there is also Colonel Colt, who made everyone equal, - Pashkin retorted, - besides, in almost all Western countries, if you drive drunk, your neighbor will be the first to call the police. This fact greatly facilitates the work and, accordingly, affects the number of police officers.
So how many cops should there be? More, less or what now?
Mikhail Pashkin thought.
It is necessary to dance from the number of crimes, - he answered. - And we have, according to various estimates, about 25 million hidden, unrecorded crimes. Until we know exactly how many offenses are actually in each district, it is impossible to talk about the number of police. For example, in Moscow, an expert may have two visits per day in one district, and 20 in another. Naturally, there should be more experts in the second district. And now it's the same across the state. It is necessary to carry out attestation of workplaces everywhere, we are now developing its criteria.
HAVE TO GET DOWN TO "EARTH"
According to Mikhail Makov, it is possible to reduce the number of police officers only by changing the entire law enforcement system.
In the US, there are operatives and investigators rolled into one - detectives, - he says. - And here, first, the operative will interview eyewitnesses, send the material to the interrogating officer or investigator. The latter will interrogate them again and give the opera new instructions. The prosecutor's office checks all this, also writes papers. If the duplication of functions is removed, both the investigative and operational apparatus can be reduced. In general, we have a very cumbersome bureaucratic system that devours a huge amount of man-hours.
Mikhail Pashkin has his own recipes for reforming the system.
The only way is the redistribution of personnel in favor of the "land", district departments, - he says. - In Moscow during the Soviet era there was a central office and there were regional departments. And now, for some reason, departments have been created for the districts, in which the generals, their assistants, secretaries, and technical employees sit. Yes, and now there are people working in the Ministry of Internal Affairs who have settled down by pull and have never sniffed the “land”. It is necessary to lower them there, and the issues with the number of personnel will be resolved by themselves.
Where there are more guards
* *According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.
EXPERT OPINION
Let's defeat the masses with education!
It is necessary to solve the problem of maintaining order at the expense of quality, not quantity, - says Pavel Krasheninnikov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Legislation. - The Association of Lawyers has long been suggesting that only people with higher education and an officer's rank be hired in the police for positions that involve communicating with people. It would seem, what does this have to do with the number of police officers? But now there are a lot of situations when young sergeants do something that then has to be corrected through colossal paperwork and at the expense of other police officers' time. Also, it seems to me, it is necessary to save the police from guarding football matches and other mass events. In many countries, security inside stadiums is provided by the clubs themselves. And the police keep order only outside.
VIEW FROM THE 6TH FLOOR
Gentlemen are not yet believed
Our system of internal affairs, of course, is not the most compact. But I would not be in a hurry to enter the "disarmament race". The recent reduction in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has become something like a reduction in barge haulers pulling a barge. The weight is the same - there are no fewer crimes and drunken people on the roads. And people in uniform - minus twenty percent. Of course, there are many complaints against the Ministry of Internal Affairs itself. Many will say that such a police is not something to be reduced - it needs to be dispersed. But for now, we don't have another one. And, in fairness, we admit that many really work for wear and tear.
Probably, it is possible to "squeeze" the state a little by reducing bureaucratic costs. But it can also go sideways. Yes, our sentries and the opera are overwhelmed with a paper routine. Reports, replies, inspectors - in the countries we envy, there is not much of this. But let's not forget that our procedure is sharpened in such a way that at any time it is possible to check every step of the operative, the investigator and others like them, to eliminate as much as possible the corruption component that has set the teeth on edge and the possibility of abuse.
Remember the joke when Petka plays cards with English lords? "I have three aces," says the lord. Petka: "Show me." They object to him: "Gentlemen are believed." “It was then,” says Petka, “that the card flooded me.” Likewise with the police. If their officer said, then it is so. And we better check twenty times. Until we can trust the cops like gentlemen, it's best not to risk it and save money just yet. It will come out more expensive.
Evgeny VLADIMIROV
QUESTION OF THE DAY
Do you have enough cops?
Ruslan GRINBERG, Director of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences:
This is exactly the case when the quantity does not matter. We are all waiting for a significant improvement in the quality of the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was promised to us when the militia was renamed into the police.
Aleksey FILATOV, Vice-President of the International Association of Veterans of the Alfa anti-terror unit:
Very often, in case of an accident, the traffic police have to wait for hours. It seems that we have a terrible shortage of law enforcement officers. In fact, there are enough of them, but they do not want to do their direct duties.
Anatoly LYSENKO, editor-in-chief of the Public Russian Television:
I have enough. There were cases when the police really helped me and my work colleagues. The only thing I would add is traffic controllers on busy highways. There are similar services in many large cities of the world, but in our country “people with sticks” have disappeared somewhere.
Evgeny KURAKOV, police officer, Nizhny Novgorod region:
We don't have enough male police officers! Some women go to work. It is understandable: the salary was raised, the ladies can easily live on it. But the head of the family, like me, is still not enough.
Karomat SHARIPOV, President of the public movement "Labor Migrants of Tajikistan":
And believe me, it seems to migrants that there are not three, but 15 times more police officers than in America! They stop, they take away money... No, not all of them, but, unfortunately, many of them.
Tatyana DOGILEVA, actress:
When I called the police and asked them to drive away the company of drunken brawlers from the Patriarch's Ponds, they told me that they did not have enough people.
Vladimir GUSEV, actor, TV series "Road cops":
It's not about numbers, it's about trust. I do not feel that I can turn to them for help as good friends who will definitely help out.
Alexey, trucker, listener of KP radio:
Yes, they are overkill! Until I get from Moscow to Orenburg, ten carriages will stop me. And present the documents to each, show the cargo. I'm wasting so much time.
Alena, KP.RU reader:
I definitely have enough: dad, two brothers, even my mother-in-law - and everyone works in the police! In the mornings, there is a queue for the toilet according to rank and rank ... One joy - in case of problems, there is someone to intercede.
The fact that Russia - allegedly "the most police" country in the world - both Western and Russian liberal media have been feeding their audiences for more than a year. Full ratings, while almost no one has ever published, getting off with infographics with photos of overweight Russian traffic cops and swollen American cops.
And finally, a relatively detailed rating appeared. Hundreds of Russian, Ukrainian (why without them?) and Western media, citing The Independent, which in turn refers to Bloomberg, stated that the full rating, developed on some secret UN research, nevertheless appeared. True, the author did not find a detailed tablet in any of the "Cyrillic" media. The news authors either limited themselves to listing 5-10 rating positions, or again posted infographics, however, this time more "strict" - without complete traffic cops.
The author of these lines decided not to be too lazy and find the "original source" in Bloomberg. And found the source. The figures circulated in the newspapers even corresponded to him quite well. And then two questions arose. The first is about the selectivity of the media, which cited only a part of the rating positions. The second one concerns the correctness of the rating itself. Apparently, the first question is directly related to the second. If the editors of the newspapers had given the full versions of the rating, many would have raised very strong doubts about it.
And so, here are a few examples. In the Bloomberg rating, as in many others, the sad first place among the "most police" states is occupied by Russia with 564 police officers per 100,000 population; the second - Turkey with 474, the third - Italy with 467, the fourth - Portugal with 454, the fifth - Hong Kong - with 450. Further, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic follow with the same order of numbers. Israel is in 14th place with 372. France is in 23rd place with 299. The USA is in 32nd place with 226.
I called the rating relatively detailed not by chance. The fact is that there are only 53 positions in it. On the 53rd - Guinea with 52 police officers per 100 thousand inhabitants. Apparently, it is implied that those who were on the list below - the "saturation" of society with the police - is even less. And there are more questions.
A year ago, bloggers unearthed another tablet, also fragmentary - but much more plausible. So, according to her, the first place in the ranking of police states is ... the Vatican with a conditional 15,625 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants. And it's all true! The official population of the Vatican is 842. And the Vatican Police (Pontifical Gendarmerie) has 130 employees. Moreover, this is a classic police force engaged in criminal investigation, traffic regulation, etc. The Swiss Guard is not included in the number of Vatican police officers - since it does not serve the Vatican, but the "Papal Throne" directly. So Bloomberg is already at least at this point caught in a lie.
In second place, according to the same blogging plate, is Monaco with 1,374 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants. And again, it looks like the truth! The population of the principality is about 35 thousand people. And only in the gendarmerie paramilitary units of the Department of Internal Affairs there are 242 people. Plus - civil servants of the Department ...
In third place, according to the same plate, is Brunei with 1,076 policemen for a conditional 100,000 population. There is not much open information on the current state of Brunei's security forces, but still the data is very plausible. The population of the sultanate is about 400 thousand people. Only one Gurkha reserve unit of the Royal Brunei Police, playing the role of the "national guard" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, is more than 2 thousand people.
Next in the same plate are Montenegro, Uruguay, Singapore, etc. Everything is quite reasonable. Most of these countries on Bloomberg's list are simply missing for some reason, which already puts him in great doubt. I propose not to deal with the analysis of each position separately - as this can turn the article into a whole monograph. Instead, I propose to deal with the correctness of the data on Russia and compare them with Bloomberg's "host country" - the United States.
Bloomberg allegedly refers to some "UN data", but everything turned out to be more prosaic. The figure of 564 per 100 thousand of the population can be easily calculated in the article "Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation" on Wikipedia. According to it, the total number of our Ministry of Internal Affairs is 821 thousand people. Comparing this figure with the population of Russia, we will get what we are looking for - 564 employees per 100,000 people. Such is the super-analyst of the UN from Wikipedia ... I will please Bloomberg. You can increase this number if you wish. After all, law enforcement functions are still performed by the FSB, the Federal Penitentiary Service, and the Federal Drug Control Service. Considering that these departments are much smaller than the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of law enforcement officers per 100,000 of the population in our country can reach somewhere around 600. But this - including all - civilian and military, certified and not certified, operas, investigators, analysts, patrolmen, security guards, accountants and psychologists ... As you can see, we are still far from the conditional indicators of the Vatican or Brunei. So Russia is clearly not the "most policeman" anymore.
And now let's deal with the other big lie of the rating. The United States, as mentioned above, in the Bloomberg rating is in 32nd place with 226 law enforcement officers per 100,000 people. Let's make sure that this is an even more blatant lie than the 1st place in Russia. Given a population of 316 million, we calculate in a simple proportion that, according to Bloomberg, there should be about 716,000 law enforcement officers in the entire US. Now let's start counting.
In the US National Guard alone, a conditional analogue of our Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, about 467 thousand people are serving at once! Thus, according to Bloomberg, only about 250,000 people should serve in all other US law enforcement agencies. Is it possible? No! According to information about the New York City Police Department, more than 35,000 employees serve in it (only in the municipal police). In Moscow, which formally has exactly one and a half times the population of New York, there are about 80,000 police officers. It seems that there are more in Moscow, but the difference is not at all impressive. And even in such calculations lies a lie. The fact is that our Ministry of Internal Affairs is a centralized structure that includes the lion's share of Russian law enforcement officers. For comparison, the number of the FSB, together with the border service, is estimated by experts in open sources at about 200 thousand people. The composition of other law enforcement agencies of Russia against the backdrop of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is completely tiny.
But in the United States, the "municipal police", with which we compared the Moscow headquarters, is just one of the many links in the law enforcement system.
At the federal level, the FBI operates in the United States, which, in addition to special services, also performs police officers - it fights banditry, catches murderers, and even investigates attacks on postmen.
At the level of each state, the state police operates, which has its own functions and jurisdiction.
The next is the city police (the same New York police, which we compared with the Moscow commander in chief).
In addition, such serious and numerous federal structures as the Marshals' Services have law enforcement functions.
Moreover, all signs of law enforcement agencies (and sometimes even much more rights) have such bodies as the Natural Resources Control Police, the Drug Control Agency, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Control Agency.
The states create, at their own request, additional bodies that somewhat duplicate the functions of the FBI and the police. For some reason they are very popular in Hollywood. These include, say, the famous Texas Rangers or the California Bureau of Investigation.
And this, not to mention the fact that their large law enforcement units exist in such departments as the Department of Finance, the Department of Energy.
And now let's add to all this the US Department of Homeland Security, which reports to the Coast Guard, the Federal Guard Service, the US Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service and a number of other departments, the total number of employees of which goes to hundreds of thousands of people (in the Coast Guard - up to 100 thousand, Border - more than 60 thousand, etc.).
Thus, the number of US law enforcement officers per 100 thousand of the population simply cannot physically be less than in Russia. It is, most likely, even somewhat larger (it is enough that the US National Guard is three times larger in number than the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia).
Bloomberg's "experts" acted in an elementary way. They took from the Internet the total number of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is about 80% of all law enforcement officers in the country, and includes internal troops, and compared it with the approximate number of only "local" police in the United States. The correctness of this comparison in view of all of the above - I think no need to comment.
Who then is the "police state"? But it is still desirable to analyze the regulatory framework. In Russia, the "American" system of listening to or accessing a person's e-mail without a court order is simply wild. As, in other matters, shooting to kill an unarmed person. Do you think a court in Russia would justify a police officer who shot an unarmed underage teenager six times in the head, simply because he seemed suspicious to him?
