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Armenian Police Chief Downplays Higher Crime Rate


Armenia -- Valeri Osipian, the Armenian police chief, speaks to journalists.
Armenia -- Valeri Osipian, the Armenian police chief, speaks to journalists.

The chief of the Armenian police, Valeri Osipian, downplayed on Thursday an 11 percent increase in the number of crimes registered in the country this year, saying that they were previously underreported.

According to Armenia’s Statistical Committee, law-enforcement bodies recorded 16,227 crimes in January-September, up from 14,554 in the same period of 2017.

Some critics blame the current Armenian government, which took office after this spring’s “velvet revolution,” for the higher crime rate. They claim that it is less tough on crime than the previous authorities in Yerevan.

Osipian insisted, however, that other factors are at play. “True, there has been an increase in crimes but it’s not risky enough to make us feel concerned … It has to do with a number of factors,” he told reporters.

“First of all, the vicious practice within the police system of concealing crimes has been completely eliminated,” explained Osipian.

He said police officers used to tell victims of theft, robbery and other offenses not to file formal crime reports “so that that does not affect police indicators.” As a result, many crimes were “registered orally” and thus not added to official statistics, he said.

Osipian, who was appointed as police chief by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in May, declined to name any police officers responsible for that. He insisted only that his predecessor Vladimir Gasparian “always demanded that they don’t underreport” crimes.

Zhanna Aleksanian, an outspoken human rights activist, strongly disagreed, saying that many crimes were “concealed, covered up and ignored” by the police under Gasparian. “I don’t think that this police [leadership] has fully stopped underreporting crimes or using violence,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.

According to Osipian, another reason for the larger number of registered crimes is that their victims are now less wary of reporting them because of what he described as greater public trust in the police. “While people did not trust, respect and love us, police servicemen, in the past, I can say that the opposite is the case now,” he claimed.

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