Russian police forces to be reformed

President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree on Thursday reforming the structure of the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation.

According to the document, the personnel of the police forces are to be reduced by 20 percent by January 1, 2012.

The presidential decree also stipulated that in three months, revisions should be made to “the rules on the selection of candidates for service or work in the interior services of the Russian Federation with their moral, ethical and psychological characteristics being taken into consideration." This follows several recent events, the most noticeable of which took place in April 2009, when policemen Denis Evsyukov shot up a Moscow supermarket, killing two people and wounding six.

According to the decree, some anti-corruption measures are to be held, including “rotation of senior staff.”

Olga Kamenchuk from the Public Opinion Research Center thinks that “the problem of corruption is quite spread among the police representatives” and speculates that the decree is to fight against it.