The future impact of the Macedonian Ombudsman work depends to a large extent of the cooperation with police internal control and prosecution.

By Mateja Agatonović (BCSP)

The Macedonian Ombudsman has assessed that police brutality has increased in 2016 in regard to previous year. In the same line, the Ombudsman filed several criminal charges against police officers for possible police brutality.

Several hundred protestors gathered in downtown Skopje to express their outrage over the death of a young man who died after being beaten by a policeman. The protestors accused the police of trying to cover up the killing, as well as for past cases of excessive use of force and intimidation. This was six years ago.

In the meantime, the Ombudsman in Macedonia is constantly advocating for the reform of police control mechanisms. One of the main reason is the fact that police brutality in Macedonia is not a new problem.

Police brutality is on the rise and there are no effective investigations, stated the Macedonian Ombudsman Idzet Memeti in December 2016.

Excessive force was allegedly used by prison guards and the regular police while arresting activists protesting in the “Colorful Revolution”. In this case, the Ombudsman filed criminal charges against police officers for possible police brutality.

One of the key demands of Macedonia’s Colorful Revolution is putting an end to the misuse of power by police in the persecution of protesters.

Two criminal charges were rejected by the prosecution. Those that are accepted refer to a suspicion of police brutality during the transportation of accused persons from the jails to the courts and the other of the brutality of a large number of prison guards over accused persons. The Ombudsman was not satisfied with the cooperation with the prosecution.

Regardless the fact that legal and institutional setup of the Macedonian Ombudsman looks good on paper, this independent regulatory body is faced lack of cooperation with the police internal control and prosecution.

Patterns of insufficient cooperation with institutions that are responsible for processing any improper police behavior are a serious impediment to police integrity. Moreover, an important factor impeding the work of the Ombudsman is the insufficient number of staff. Only one person is dealing with cases of police misconduct.

During the political deliberations aimed at the betterment of Ombudsman’s oversight over the police, a new solution appeared on the table – formation of a new institution as a Police Ombudsman. There seems to be a political consensus that introducing a Police Ombudsman should be the next step in ensuring external police oversight. However, Magdalena Lembovska from Analytica proposed that the new Macedonian Government should firstly review the results and recommendations of the previous projects on police oversight.

“After review, it’s necessary to conduct a public debate on establishing a new external oversight mechanism, and demonstrate to the citizens a genuine commitment to implement the chosen solution”, underlined Lembovska.

RELATED

TAGS: AnalysisExternal OversightMacedoniaSpecial Oversight Bodies