23 August 2002
Eleven criminal cases involving police officers under investigation in Brest

 Eleven criminal cases where suspects include police officers are currently under investigation in Brest, the capital of southwestern Belarus, Colonel Vladimir Shafarenko said on August 21 at his first news conference as the Brest region's police chief.
In the first seven months of 2002, the number of disciplinary penalties imposed on members of the region's police force (UVD) grew by 80 percent as compared with January-July 2001, Colonel Shafarenko said. According to him, the most common violations are abuse of authority,
bribery and road incidents.
"We are trying to tighten control over our personnel," the police chief said. "Not a single crime committed by my subordinates must go unpunished. The penalties are strict. Officers get discharged from the force and stripped of their rights for three years." The colonel denied the allegations of an article that appeared on August 20 in the national newspaper Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta. It alleged connections
between Brest's law-enforcement authorities and the criminal underworld and conflicts between the Committee for State Security (KGB) and the police. Colonel Shafarenko dismissed the article as "mixing beans with peas." "The relationship between the UVD and the KGB is good. We maintain a good level of cooperation, and there
is no way that that article can provoke quarrels between us," he said.