Policeman Kills Teen

By Irina Titova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: January 25, 2012 (Issue # 1692)

A policeman has been suspended after a teenage boy died in police custody at the weekend.

Nevsky district police inspector Denis Ivanov, 24, acknowledged that on Sunday night he beat up a 15-year-old boy at the police precinct where the teenager had been taken after being detained for attempted robbery.

Ivanov hit the teenager many times using both his hands and a broomstick. Afterwards, when it was clear the boy was badly injured, the police called an ambulance, but the boy died on the way to the hospital, the St. Petersburg Investigation Committee said Monday.

Ivanov failed to explain the motives for his actions, it said.

Mikhail Sukhodolsky, head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast police, said the teenager had died after the policeman “beat the evidence out of him.”

Sukhodolsky suspended Viktor Dmitrieyev, the head of the Nevsky district regional police administration, over the incident on Monday, Interfax reported.

“We live in 2012 and not in 1917. What is this?” said St. Petersburg prosecutor Sergei Litvinenko, Baltinfo news agency reported.

Prior to admitting the offense, Ivanov and several other policemen from the police department that detained the teenager “actively resisted the investigation procedures, saying that they used physical force against the teenager only at the moment of detention,” the committee said.

The investigation initially stated that on Saturday night, several policemen witnessed a teenage boy and his partner-in-crime steal a purse from a local 44-year-old woman. The policemen managed to catch and detain one of the thieves, an eighth-grade student. The other boy escaped. The policemen originally said that they brought the detained teenager to the police station and obtained information from him. After that, the boy was suddenly taken ill, and the police called an ambulance for him, the committee said.

Russia’s children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said the policemen first tried to convince the investigation that the boy had had an epileptic seizure and died as a result, Interfax reported.

Astakhov said via Twitter that the police department where the incident took place should be thoroughly investigated and if other similar cases were discovered, the head of the police department put on trial.

The prosecution has opened a criminal case into the matter under the part of the Russian Criminal Code on causing severe harm to someone’s health resulting in the death of the victim due to negligence.