COMMUNITY POLICING AS A WAY OF LIFE

Early on, Ilsur Nuriahmetov wanted to fly in the skies and joined the Aviation College. After an accident, he moved underground and got himself a job with a mining company. Today, he has his beat on the ground — as a simple community police officer in Kazan. But he has the respect of everybody in his district, up to the last wino

COMMUNITY POLICING AS A WAY OF LIFE

What an ideal community police officer would be is a creature with two heads, many hands and plenty of legs; under all applicable rules and regulations, each and every community officer in Russia must be: a rehabilitation coach, a paramedic, a tourist guide, a psychologist, a security guard, an information clerk, a detective, an arbiter, a shoulder to cry on, a constable, and about 1000 other things too. He actually does it all, and yet, Nuriahmetov never complains about anything but a permanent lack of time

When I met him, Ilsur Nuriahmetov reminded me of a character in a long forgotten TV series about the police: stocky and tough, with attentive, piercing eyes, but also good-natured. Unlike that other man in the series, Nuriahmetov never aspired to be a policeman. Coming from a family of farmers and workers, he graduated from the Aviation College of Kazan and went to work for the Kazan Aviation Factory. He could have made it a lifetime career if it weren't for an accident, in 1988, in which he got his face badly burnt. To spare his family and friends the painful sight of his ugly scars, he went away for a while and spent five years mining coal in one of the mines of the Donetsk region. He is to this day proud that he had been strong enough for the hard work. When he returned home, he was offered a job as an officer in the local community policing unit of the Interior. After some hesitations, he accepted and donned the police uniform.

Seven years later, Nuriahmetov is one of the most experienced community officers in Tatarstan, but he claims that his job is nothing special as long as you meet three basic requirements: a. give it your all; b. know how to keep your cool; c. have loads of patience. A community police officer needs all that to stay on top of all sorts of people and of all sorts of problems, claims and complaints.

A DAYS AND A NIGHTS WORK, COMMUNITY POLICING STYLE

Nobody knows how many hours Nuriahmetov has to put up every day. He is first seen in «his» neighborhood between seven and eight in the morning, and he never leaves before eleven in the evening. Which still doesn't tell you much about how he does it, because community policing is more a way of life than a 9 to 5 office job with piles of papers and files of visitors. His superiors blame him mildly for being too meticulous. A strong believer in the fact that in real life small details always count, he tends to disregard these criticisms.

What an ideal community police officer would be is a creature with two heads, many hands and plenty of legs; under all applicable rules and regulations, each and every community officer in Russia must be: a rehabilitation coach, a carer, a tourist guide, a psychologist, a security guard, an information clerk, a detective, an arbiter, a shoulder to cry on, a constable, and about 1000 other things too. He actually does it all, and yet, Nuriahmetov never complains about anything but a permanent lack of time.

He knows his neighborhood inside out; he knows everyone, and everybody knows him. He can talk about them for hours. He is responsible for 52 apartment blocks, a cultural center, an undertakers shop, a health center for children, a school, a taxi companys compound, five inner yards patronized by winos, sixteen problem families, thirty eight drug users, countless drinking problems and four supervised cases (meaning people with a history of violent crimes and not yet doing time again). He has even got his own «mafia», a gang of converted thugs who used to terrorize the neighborhood but have long ago settled down. All in all, compared to some others, his community is doing fine. As to his winos, problem families and drug addicts, hes got most of them because the city's authorities always tended to relocate them in the suburbs so as to keep the inner city nice and pretty.

THE PEAKED CAP

In any Russian town, wherever there is a community police officer, he is easily recognizable, especially by his peaked cap. Which is both good and bad. Good because people always know where to seek assistance if they need it. But on the other hand, it gives an easy notice to the bad guys to get lost. Well aware of this treacherous deficiency of his uniform, Nuriahmetov has learnt with time, when needed, to take the cap off and to blend into the crowd.

The premises that harbor the one-man law enforcement unit under Nuriahmetov's command are located in the basement of what Russians call a «stalinian» building, because of its imperial architecture which was the norm in Stalins days; Nuriahmetov's building may deserve its nickname even more since in the 50s, Stalin's son Vassili occupied an apartment on the fourth floor. Today, thanks to the help of the local administration and of a few «sponsors», the basement is being refurbished, probably for the very first time since it has been built. For a place that is a tiny but still important stronghold of government authority, this was long overdue.

An old PC, originally assembled by a helping enthusiast, is all the office equipment at Nuriahmetov's disposal. Comes in handy to keep files and records up-dated. Nuriahmetov also has a side-arm (a Makarov hand gun), a truncheon, a pair of handcuffs, his hands and his brains. He convinced he is lucky because the main precinct and the dormitory for homeless drunks are not far away, and in an emergency he can also count on the help of a few security guards working for a local company. They respect him, as everybody else, for his physical strength and his fairness. After all, even the winos call him Mr Major.

I spent half a day following Ilsur Nuriahmetov on his beat. Many of those we came across saluted him and had a respectful glance for me if they thought I was Nuriahmetov's friend, or showed some compassion if I looked to them as another «victim» of his disciplining. I was getting a bit nervous because I was running late for my next meeting at the Kremlin, with councilor Khakimov, and yet I had still a few things I wanted to discuss with Nuriahmetov.

As I was telling him this, he took me to the street and made an energetic sign with his arm to the passing traffic. Two cars drove by, but an empty trolleybus obligingly stopped. In his natural polite way Nuriahmetov asked the driver to help, and he agreed to give me a lift. So I left for the Kremlin in my own private trolleybus, watching Nuriahmetov resuming his walk on his beat, like a foot soldier, because, when he was due to get a patrol car, the traffic police managed to re-allocate it for its own needs.

THE ROUTINES

Con-men are legion these days, in Kazan as everywhere else in the country. Not long ago, in Nuriahmetov's neighborhood, an old woman, with severely impaired hearing, lost 25 dollars to one such bastard. This was really tough luck because normally, the old lady never opened her door to anyone, not even to her neighbors, but this time she did and faced a total stranger who claimed to be from the social security office, collecting payments for subsidized foodstuffs to be delivered later, which sounded very much like the normal practice of the office, given that a national holiday was coming very soon. So the woman trusted the man, only to learn that she had been duped. Nuriahmetov interviewed the old lady thoroughly, and a few days later recognized the con-man in the street and arrested him.

Nuriahmetov is a peaceful man, kind by nature. Normally, he does not need to get angry because his impressive looks and his soft low voice are persuasive enough in most of the cases. But sometimes they are not enough. Some time ago, as late at night Nuriahmetov was crossing the Uritski Park on his way home, he saw a big fight, some 20 men beating the hell out of each other. He grabbed one, who seemed particularly aggressive and noisy, with the intention of arresting him. Immediately, all the others forgot whatever grievances had started their fight and turned as one against Nuriahmetov. To quote his subsequent report, they «intended to beat me black and blue»; and therefore, «to restore order on the territory put under my supervision» Nuriahmetov drew out his police issue gun. Seeing it, the gang stopped dead in their tracks. Since then, Nuriahmetov is trying to impress on the local administration that it would be nice to have some lights in the park, as it used to be in not such a distant past.

Dmitri AKSENOV