The Police Directorate is actively implementing the recommendations of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), said Acting Director of the Police Directorate Lazar Šćepanović, adding that the police now has zero tolerance for inhumane treatment of citizens.
As announced by the Police Directorate, Šćepanović said this at a meeting with the Head of the Sector in the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Claire Brown.
It is stated that the reason for the meeting was the implementation of the CPT recommendations given in the last Report on the visit to Montenegro from 2022, which also reviewed two ECHR judgments in the cases "Siništaj and Others v. Montenegro" and "Baranin and Vukčević v. Montenegro", which relate to the actions of the Police Directorate from 2006 and 2015.
Šćepanović, as announced, emphasized that the Police Directorate is actively working on implementing the recommendations of the European Committee from the latest periodic report.
"The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), or rather the Police Directorate, has adopted an Instruction on the Implementation of Recommendations from the CPT Report, which contains a set of measures and activities aimed at implementing the recommendations," said Šćepanović.
He explained that with this Instruction, all organizational units of the police, which are recognized by the Plan of Measures as the bearers of activities, are obliged to submit quarterly reports on the measures and actions taken to the competent Department of the Police Administration.
This, according to Šćepanović, enables continuous monitoring of the implementation of recommendations.
"In order to further align with international standards, the Ministry of the Interior has adopted a Rulebook on the conditions that must be met by premises for holding arrested and detained persons, which represents another in a series of activities aimed at aligning with CPT standards," said Šćepanović.
As he pointed out, they also adopted an Instruction that regulates in more detail the procedures for police officers to deal with persons who are brought to premises used by the Police Directorate, the competent prosecutor's office or the court.
Šćepanović said that, accordingly, all uniformed police officers are required to wear insignia with their name and surname or, when wearing protective and intervention equipment, a combination of letters and numbers, or official identification in a visible place, and to visibly display them when dealing with citizens.
According to him, in order to raise the level of professional, transparent and lawful conduct, organizational units of the Police Directorate continuously hold meetings on the topic of preventing abuse of detained persons.
"Educational training courses are also periodically conducted related to respect for human rights, with an emphasis on the prohibition of torture, as well as mental-tactical training in the field of the application of means of coercion," added Šćepanović.
He said that at the same time, through guidelines and recommendations and guided by negative experience from the previous period, police officers are implementing optimization measures to protect their own legal and professional actions from unfounded accusations and false reporting.
Šćepanović said that this year the Police Directorate will initiate measures and activities aimed at implementing the unrealized CPT recommendations and implementing projects, in cooperation with international partners, to improve technical capacities and introduce body cameras.
"Which will additionally ensure the legality of the actions of police officers through simplified control at work, and on the other hand, protect police officers from unfounded complaints," said Šćepanović.
Braun, as announced, said that she was satisfied with the level of implementation of the CPT recommendations and thanked Šćepanović for the detailed and thorough presentation of the implementation of the aforementioned recommendations so far.
She assessed that the meeting was extremely useful for the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the ECHR, since this was the Department's first visit to Montenegro.
At the end of the meeting, Šćepanović said that the Police Directorate is determined to eradicate systemic abuse.
"In which it remains open to cooperation with the state prosecutor's office and control mechanisms, where significant progress has been noted when it comes to individual responsibility in dealing with cases of abuse and processing events in which such behavior has been reported from 2022 to the present," Šćepanović stated.
As he added, the police now have zero tolerance for inhumane treatment of citizens.
Šćepanović emphasized that in the application of these mechanisms, care must be taken to protect police officers from false reporting on the one hand, and the quality of prevention of abuse on the other.
As announced by the Police Directorate, the meeting was also attended by the representative of Montenegro before the ECHR, Katarina Peković, and the Head of the Department for Support to Police Organizational Units, Improvement of Police Work, Analytics and Improvement of Standards of Police Conduct, Igor Glavatović.
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