Georgian Vice PM: neither discrediting police nor abuse by law enforcement will be tolerated

Mamuka Mdinaradze, Georgia’s Vice Prime Minister and State Minister for the Coordination of Law Enforcement Agencies, on Saturday said that the government would not tolerate either violence or attempts to discredit the police, stressing that accountability applies to both law enforcement officers and civilians.

Speaking on the Imedi TV talk show Open Air - Debates, Mdinaradze noted that no one can guarantee that a crime would never happen among 45,000 officers, but the state could guarantee that no one would remain unpunished.

“One thing I can tell you with certainty: tomorrow a crime may still happen; out of 45,000 people, someone may again disgrace the police uniform. No one can guarantee anyone that this will not happen - I cannot guarantee the public that a police officer will not commit some crime tomorrow, out of 45,000 people - but we can guarantee that no one will remain unpunished. When I was moving to this position, I said on one of the programmes, when there was talk that police officers were not being punished during protests, I gave my word, and within a few weeks, or at most a few days, that promise was fulfilled. Wherever it was possible to collect even minimal evidence, it was collected for everyone, and that work continues; it is not finished”, he said.

He criticised certain TV channels for deliberately omitting known facts - such as arrests made in February - to provoke unrest and damage the image of law enforcement.

“I am warning everyone - whether it is a police officer or any other person who tries to discredit a police officer - that we will not tolerate insults to the police uniform, the dignity of police officers, or heroic people, nor manipulation campaigns aimed at discrediting them. Yesterday we saw that it was known to them first in February, then from the prosecutor’s press service -they knew people had been detained, yet they deliberately did not include this in the announcement. On the other hand, whether it is a police officer or another representative of any agency, we will not tolerate violence and such harmful actions, nor insults to the police uniform. We will not allow or forgive it. This is the correct approach”, Mdinaradze noted.

The Vice Prime Minister expressed surprise at the silence regarding similar incidents in Denmark, France, and the UK, where people are beaten in the streets without punishment, calling it “democratic beating”.

“I am surprised by those people who say nothing at all about cases, for example, in Denmark, France, or the United Kingdom - where people are beaten in the streets, in front of cameras, and to this day no one has been punished for these incidents. That does not bother anyone. No one talks about that”, he stressed.

“There, it seems, they are ‘beaten democratically’. In our case, however, when a person has already been punished, when a case is opened even four years later, they try to twist it and present it as a systemic issue. There will be no systemic problem, no violence, because we will always ensure prevention. There were things we could not do in previous years the way we can today. No one will get away with their crime”, Mdinaradze concluded.