Moscow PD Blues : Their Cars Are Junk, Pay Stinks, They Don’t Always Know Who’s in Charge. But What Really Overwhelms Russian Cops Is Something New: Big-Time Capitalist Crime.

Inside a ramshackle brown brick police station, Lt. Col. Mikhail Sergeivich Pertsev absorbs the latest news crackling over the police band. “A man with a submachine gun just threatened a man in a car,” he says gloomily. “The man lost the car.”

A carjacking? Where?

“Not far from here. An area that used to have a lot of construction. Huts were built for the workers to live in, and there was lots of fighting with knives.” Pertsev pauses. “We call this district Chicago.”

As chief of one of Moscow’s smaller police stations, in the northern part of the city, Pertsev seems to possess a bottomless store of good humor, which he needs. He presides over 110 officers--”We should have 120, but no one wants to be a policeman anymore”--and a fleet of seven squad cars, two of which don’t work. “They are like the Aurora boat that started the Bolshevik Revolution and is now a museum in St. Petersburg,” Pertsev says wryly. “They do not move.”

Sitting behind the desk in his no-frills office, Pertsev proudly hoists a brand new police radio. “It’s a Motorola, and we have our American colleagues to thank for it,” he notes. “Seven came last week. Unfortunately, we need 40 or 50.” Before the radios arrived, Pertsev’s men relied on Hungarian-made sets. “The Hungarians probably felt hurt with us after 1956,” he offers slyly. “Their radios only caused trouble.”

Immovable cars and balky radios are the least of the problems that dog Moscow’s 100,000 officers. An escalating crime spree has exploded--sometimes literally, with grenades--throughout the streets of this city of 9 million. Cars disappear in the night, a new old-style mafia operates with reckless abandon, and guns abound, thanks to the disintegration of the Red Army, which has made stolen weapons commonplace on the black market. Even when a criminal is caught red-handed, police may have to let him go. Russia’s criminal justice code, enacted in 1961, did not envision many of the new order’s cunning crimes. Added to all this is a departmental reorganization that has blurred territorial boundaries, confusing just about everyone. “We are the only state system that has not collapsed,” Pertsev laments. “But that isn’t saying much.”

Vladimir Vershkov, a ruddy-cheeked lieutenant colonel in charge of press relations, shakes his head at the insanity of it all. “Every day, we have explosions, stolen autos, robberies, apartment assaults,” he says, using the Russian vernacular for burglary. “Such things we have never seen before.”

Indeed, last summer, a man in a policeman’s uniform entered one of Moscow’s new commercial banks, pretending to check out how the bank was performing its duties. Right behind him marched seven submachine-gun-toting accomplices. A four-hour standoff with the police ensued. The result: one cop dead, two others wounded, six suspects apprehended, two still at large, a police force--and a city--dumbfounded. “This was our first bank stickup,” says one high-ranking police official. “The state took it very hard.”

But not as hard as the December murder of Nikolai P. Likhachev, chairman of the gigantic Rosselkhozbank, who was gunned down in his Moscow apartment--one of 30 bank officials murdered last year. On the day of his funeral, banks and currency exchanges closed to protest the government’s inability to protect them. Seizing the moment, hard-liner Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky raised crime to a political issue by blaming violence on people from former Soviet republics.

Before former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and then Boris N. Yeltsin, opened up Russia to a free-market economy, there had been no crime in Moscow, officially, because socialism was a perfect society. Well, maybe a little crime. Desperate for car parts, citizens routinely stole each other’s windshield wipers, while party officials pocketed great gobs of state money, but otherwise there was little to steal. Now, with the influx of foreign hard currency and a proliferation of commercial ventures, Russians are experiencing one of the ancillary fruits of capitalism: big-time crime.

It’s a growth industry. In the past few years, three tabloids have appeared, each dealing with only one subject--crime--which is often the lead story on TV news as well. This is understandable. During 1993, about 19,000 major crimes were committed in Moscow, compared to 302,000 in Los Angeles: While one in 11 Angelenos was victimized, only one in about 500 Muscovites felt the sting of a major crime--but that’s a 39% increase over the same period in 1992. Still, while Los Angeles averaged 78 murders a month, Moscow averaged 100, up 55% from the previous year, and “heavy wounds,” from which the victim may or may not eventually expire, were up 34%. Auto thefts, carjackings and car robberies are running at about 675 a month. When the year began, five or six cars were stolen a day; during one recent night in Moscow, 102 cars vanished.

“How many auto thefts do you have in Los Angeles?” asks Vershkov, the press relations man.

“About 70,000 a year.”

Vershkov blinks. “Oh.”

“But we’ve been at it longer.”

More interesting are statistics involving police action. During 1993, they fired their guns on 1,358 occasions, while in Los Angeles, police used their weapons in only 144 incidents. “We are allowed to shoot at people if we order them to stop and they don’t,” explains Alexander Shestakov, 39, a veteran of the Moscow traffic police. “If a child has a gun and is a threat, I will have to use my gun. I will first shoot into the air. Then at his feet, legs or arms.” Which explains why, a few months after the Rodney King beating incident, a member of a delegation of Russian police visiting Los Angeles told Chief Daryl F. Gates, “We don’t understand all the fuss. In Russia, we would have just shot him.”

Use-of-force definitions aside, the average Moscow policeman is much like an L.A. cop: overworked, underpaid, ill-equipped, outnumbered. The two departments even share a strategy: community-based policing. In Moscow, it exists in the form of one officer, called an uchastkovy , in each small police district, who is housed in a state-funded flat and whose job is to know his neighborhood. “He is supposed to know how people deal with each other, who drinks too much, who might be in need of medical help,” says one official. “Most of the time, he stays in his office and people come to him, but he also makes the rounds. If a crime is committed, he is usually called in. He knows the people better than anybody.”

Despite this coziness, relations with the community are, if possible, even worse than in Los Angeles. If some Angelenos call LAPD officers brutal, almost all Muscovites call their cops criminals.

“Money, money, money!” shouts Alex Belabin, my driver in Moscow, every time we pass a white-gloved traffic cop standing over some doomed motorist. It is a common sight. “Russian people hate the police,” says Belabin with passion. “Every day, they pull me over. ‘Hello, Alex!’ Money, money, money!”

Fines for traffic infractions must be paid on the spot. If the motorist doesn’t have the dough on him, the officer may follow him home to collect it or confiscate his license. But everyone knows you can buy your way out of almost any violation, even drunk driving, by slipping the cop several thousand rubles. Although this keeps the motorist’s record blemish-free, Russians resent the practice and refer to traffic cops as milkmen--people who milk the public.

“We have jokes about the police,” says one young woman. “An officer tells his superior he’s getting married, and he needs more money. The superior hands him a portable stop sign.”

But it’s not just the traffic cops who have their hands out. With the advent of commercial ventures come commercial bribes. A small-business owner without the thicket of proper licenses and state approvals can simply pay off an investigating officer to ignore the infractions.

None of this is news to Pertsev. “We have policemen who take bribes,” he says with a weary shrug. “Things do not run too smoothly here.”

SPACE IN MOSCOW IS SO TIGHT THAT POLICE STATIONS TURN UP IN THE oddest places. One I visited consumes half of an apartment building; another is located in a taxi park. Mikhail Pertsev’s Khovrino Municipal Police Station is housed in a former school built in 1946. Dark, dank and dungeon-like, it’s a prime example of Russia’s crumbling infrastructure. Stairs are broken, floor tiles cracked; paint peels off walls; hallway ceilings are a mass of tangled wires. Many overhead fixtures lack bulbs; the bathroom is beyond description.

None of this seems to faze Pertsev. “I work 12 hours a day,” he says with feeling, “though two or three nights a week, I stay longer, till 1 or 3 in the morning, depending. I also work weekends. This summer, I was supposed to have 50 days vacation. But after 20, I was relieved to be called back because of so much crime.”

Pertsev, a stocky, dark-haired 43-year-old, tackles his job with an old-fashioned sense of pride and responsibility. The chunk of Moscow he watches over, a “sleeping district” of 70,000, is where he grew up and where he still resides with his wife and two sons. Thus, he knows where all the bodies are buried, or at least where they live. He feels protective toward his men--even toward the neighborhood hooligans, some of whom he has helped find jobs.

But, as is true everywhere, the neighborhood has changed. Pertsev became a police officer in 1979, after serving six years in the Soviet military. “When I was young and lighter in weight, I could bring back five or six criminals at a time,” he recalls. “I didn’t need to carry a gun. They wouldn’t resist me. Now, we all walk around with submachine guns.”

On cue, two officers burst into Pertsev’s office to show me. Each wears a helmet and, over his clothes, a bulletproof vest that seems a closer relation to knight’s armor than to the light Kevlar vests common in America. Strapped to each belt is a 9-millimeter pistol. In their hands, Kalashnikov submachine guns. “Whenever we get a call that a crime is in progress, these are the men we send out,” Pertsev says.

Do they use motorcycles?

Pertsev grins. “We have some, but they’re old and can’t be used in a chase.” He jumps up. “Come, I’ll show you around.”

Pertsev flings open an office door and points to the desks, bragging that he bought them from an old hotel. Then, throwing open another door, he announces proudly, “This is our gym. Our officers built it themselves.”

The drab room, maybe 15 feet by 10 feet, is two-thirds consumed by blue floor mats surrounded by ropes. A makeshift slant board, balanced on the seat of a broken-back chair, is crammed between two rusting sets of barbells.

It gets worse. The forensics lab, housed in a tiny, gray, damp room with a single fluorescent bulb, contains only an ancient photo enlarger. More sophisticated work, such as analyzing fingerprints, must be done at headquarters. In December, 1992, Pertsev’s station was issued three new Russian-made Moskvitch police cars. “By January,” he says, “we were making repairs.” Although the cars are serviced at a friendly auto shop, where the owner charges for parts but not labor, Pertsev confesses, “After we use up our budget, we have to pay for parts out of our own pockets.”

But--how? Pertsev makes 150,000 rubles a month, about $150, although the steady decline of the ruble makes it worth less every week. In addition, because he has 20 years service (including his stint in the military), he is eligible to collect 25% of his pension, which amounts to another 7,000 rubles ($7) a month. “A kilo of sausage costs 10,000 rubles,” Pertsev says bleakly, “if it’s good sausage.”

He brightens. “But let’s talk about crime.”

Back in his office, Pertsev removes a VCR from a locked cabinet. He plugs it into the TV and pops in a cassette. A bright, clear tape shows officers searching 25 “mafia people” who had been brought in for questioning. Each of the bad guys wears a black leather jacket over a bulletproof vest. Many carry wads of U.S. dollars. One has several small metal balls--”new armaments,” Pertsev calls them--that, if thrown at the right velocity and target (the forehead), can kill. Painstakingly, the officers study each man’s passport.

“Look at this one,” Pertsev says, tapping the TV, as the camera focuses on the passport of a young, dark-haired man. Pertsev laughs. “The photo is of Yeltsin!”

Even with Pertsev’s force doing its best to nail mafia hoods and everyday crooks, his men can’t always put them in jail. Buying or carrying firearms is strictly illegal and is punishable by up to five years in jail. But proving possession is not a simple matter. “You catch a man with a submachine gun, and he says he found it on the street,” Vladimir Vershkov says. “There is nothing we can do.”

Auto thefts, one of the major sources of crime in Moscow, are also difficult to prosecute. If a criminal is caught driving a stolen car, he can simply say he “borrowed” it. Unless the police can find evidence of his intent to dismantle and resell it, at worst he’ll have to pay a fine. “Recently, we saw a man stealing a car,” Pertsev recounts. “We chased him and finally shot him in the arm. He was fined 900 rubles”--less than a dollar.

Most likely, however, the man was part of a ring. Another man will change the numbers on the engine, another will provide false documents, a fourth will actually resell it. To get a conviction for theft, the police must implicate all of them. “Three years ago, the criminals started coming in from the southern republics or Caucasus,” Pertsev says, echoing a typical Moscow explanation for the crime wave. “We have a Chechen mafia, a Georgian mafia, an Azerbaijan mafia. We call these people our black brothers.”

Still, these problems may be somewhat overblown. “The police probably forgot to tell you that it’s not really the laws that are holding them back,” says Sergei Litvinov, a former Siberian police detective who now works as an investigator in San Francisco. “Five or 10 years ago, when Russia had a conviction rate of 99%, they didn’t need to collect evidence. Now, with the slight democratization that’s going on, they must fingerprint and nail their case down. They’re still not used to this. Like everything in Russia, the police are inefficient.”

As the police try to cope with the underworld, their superiors are knotted in hierarchical problems. Since early 1991, Moscow’s police have been pawns in a political game. Police chiefs and district lines were reshuffled at least five times, with the latest municipal government reorganization only producing more headaches. Formerly, each of Moscow’s 182 police stations reported to one of the 33 municipal districts, which reported directly to headquarters. Now the 33 districts have been reshaped into 10 sectors called okrugs , which has flummoxed just about everyone.

“Nothing seems to mesh,” says Vladimir Zolotnitzki, a lieutenant clutching an Ed McBain police novel, who works in public affairs at headquarters. “If a murder takes place, police will come from headquarters, from the okrug and the local police station. You have to call a prosecutor as well. But the prosecutors’ districts are different from ours, and nobody knows which prosecutor to call.” Arguments break out as some crimes attract police from two local stations--or no one shows up at all.

Before the reorganization, Pertsev’s station and four others reported to a district station; now 17 stations report to the local okrug . “When we have a meeting, 60 heads of departments come,” Pertsev says. “The new system is like a monster.”

Finding recruits to feed this monster isn’t easy either. The department has numerous positions open that it cannot fill. The lure of becoming a police officer is fading fast. Not only can more money be made working security for private concerns, but the public’s distrust of the police is hardly a major selling point. According to Pertsev, a policeman can equal a month’s salary through bribes. “Even though I am shorthanded,” he says, “I have fired five men for taking bribes and two for being drunk.”

Later, Pertsev takes a tour of his district, a mix of quiet residential streets and bustling boulevards dotted with the usual stranded motorists staring vacantly under raised hoods at stalled engines. He stops at a local market, where individual sellers of produce and goods have set up stalls. Pertsev greets many vendors and the market manager by name, checking to make sure everything is OK. This is mafia territory, he points out, ripe for people with protection schemes.

A few blocks later, Pertsev pulls up in front of a kiosk. A sort of Russian-style 7-Eleven, kiosks have blossomed along boulevards under the new free-market economy. They are open all hours, sell everything from cigarettes to shoes and, like their American counterparts, are routinely held up. The week before, an armed robber busted into this one. One of the two owners wrestled the gun from the intruder and held him until the police came. The owner points to several bullet holes that bored into the ceiling during the struggle for the gun. “See?” he says with a grin. “We have a little bit of Los Angeles right in here.”

PETROVKA 38--POLICE HEADQUARTERS--IS A YELLOW SIX-STORY BUILDING set behind a wrought-iron gate. It, too, is in need of repair. Long stretches of hallway are unaccountably dark, the elevator may or may not work. On a table in the bare lobby is a picture of a slain cop, killed several nights before by anti-Yeltsin demonstrators. A vase with several flowers stands beside the photograph.

Petrovka 38 contains administrative offices, forensics labs and some citywide units. In Room 335, heavyset Lt. Col. Anatoly Ilchenko, wearing a dark suit, dark shirt and dark tie, looks to be just what he is: deputy head of the organized crime department. “Moscow is like America in the ‘30s,” he says. “I think.”

Until 1989, Moscow police didn’t have an organized-crime unit. But by last February, the unit had expanded into a full-fledged department, staffed by 20 to 25 officers at each okrug and 500 more at headquarters. “One of the biggest problems,” Ilchenko says, repeating what seems to be the party line, “is we have no legislation for organized crime. We need something like your RICO laws, which deal with the formation of criminal enterprises.”

Although Ilchenko dismisses newspaper reports of organized crime as grossly exaggerated, he concedes that, “While only 1% of all crime is mafia-related, most organized crime is not obvious. When people pay racketeers, they don’t tell us.”

Indeed, almost everyone one encounters in Moscow has a mafia-type story. Especially kiosk owners. Rather than be robbed repeatedly, many pay protection money. Individuals who set up money-changing operations are also strong-armed. So are Moscow’s 60 casinos. “We hire members of the OMON (Moscow’s equivalent of SWAT) to man the front door,” says Charles Pancoast, an American who is chief financial officer for the exclusive Casino Royale, an elegantly decorated club housed in the former residence of Czar Nicholas I. “Anyone who tries to mess with us will have to deal with them first.”

More common is the story of Michael Boulygin, who has built a flourishing translation business for foreigners in need of English interpreters. A fellow he went to school with approached him: “You need protection,” he told Boulygin. For 30,000 rubles a month ($30), this friend’s “friends” would take care of any problems Boulygin might have. Says Boulygin’s wife, Svetlana: “People don’t trust the police. What these protection people are doing is taking over some functions the police can’t handle. We don’t mind paying.” According to the police, even banks hire racketeers--to find the criminals who steal their money.

In the past, there was a national bank, which did business with the smaller state banks, and authorities knew exactly what to do if something went awry, which, of course, it never did. Russia now has 2,000 commercial banks, and their relations with state banks are not regulated. According to Vladimir Objedkov, head of the department of economic crime, “We don’t know who’s responsible for commercial banks. People are taking advantage of this confusion.”

He is sitting on a dais, flanked by seven other police officials at the weekly press briefing at Petrovka 38. A dozen local print reporters are seated in the small auditorium, taking copious notes.

Objedkov delivers an anecdotal rundown of the recent crimes in his department. “Credit robbery is something new,” he says. “A young entrepreneur will set up a company using false documents. He’ll get credit from banks, then disappear, changing the money into hard currency and transferring it abroad.”

Often, Objedkov goes on, the banker is in cahoots with the entrepreneur, accepting false documents knowingly for a piece of the profits. “But then,” he says with a quick smile, “the Russians have always been very inventive.”

And daring. A company called Finstrakh ran TV commercials with this message: “Invest your money with us. If you invest dollars, you’ll see a 300% return in a year. If rubles, a 100% return.”

People showed up at Finstrakh’s offices in droves. That a small police unit of three officers was operating in the same building only made them feel safer. The Finstrakh people were clever: When one man arrived with 1.5 million rubles to invest, they turned him away. The thinking? Anyone with that much money would undoubtedly hire a racketeer to come after them when they absconded with the money. Which, of course, they did.

FROM THE BRIGHTLY LIT rooms of Petrovka 38’s command center, a big room of telephone switchboards, the cops monitor the city.

“With our computer network, we can alert any police station or patrol car, individually or all at once,” says Col. Alexander Denisov, the on-duty unit chief. “Within three or four minutes, a car can reach where the crime is committed.”

Sure.

“Right now, we have 120 cars out from this, our central unit. All together, we can have 250 to 300 cars out.”

It is noon, and, according to Denisov, 7,000 cops are on duty, including patrols, traffic police and detectives. An enormous relief map of Moscow covers the far wall. Small light bulbs indicate the positions of cars on duty. In the next room, two men sit behind a switchboard, receiving and relaying critical information. “We have direct communications with all okrugs and police cars,” says Lt. Col. Victor Pospelov. “Also, we can contact the power supply service, the fire department and ambulances.”

How many crimes today?

“Since midnight, one murder, one assault, one robbery and 45 car thefts, not counting fires or car accidents.”

The city’s emergency response system is upstairs. Ten phone lines are hooked to 02, the Moscow equivalent of 911, staffed by 10 policewomen. “Men can’t stand working here,” Denisov volunteers. “But women are very good at it.” Three of the women look up and smile agreeably. The typical cop seems either to come to his profession from the military or after studying at institutions like the Academy of Internal Affairs or the Militia Academy. Women are trained in non-physical work at the police academy, then carefully slotted into jobs that keep them behind desks. They operate the new computers that run fingerprints, while men are assigned to the crime scene to collect the fingerprints. When asked about this, Victor Petchnikov, the tall, curly-haired head of criminal police at one okrug , says with a patient smile, “The criminal police have no regular hours. Women need to be home to take care of their husbands and children. They prefer it.”

So it is women who handle the 20,000 to 24,000 calls that are made to 02 each 24 hours. Some calls are from people asking for information, but even so, Denisov boasts, all calls are handled efficiently and promptly.

“Then how come people complain they can never get through?” I ask.

Denisov smiles benignly. “Obviously, they have dialed the wrong number,” he says.

IT IS 9 P.M. ON A CHILLY Moscow night as three patrol officers begin the final hours of their shift. In Moscow, cops go out in threes. All ride in the car with submachine guns in their laps. A call comes over the radio reporting that a man with a submachine gun and several automatic weapons is terrorizing someone in an apartment building. “Practically every day, criminals use automatic weapons,” says Capt. Vladimir Kulkov, fingering his own.

These officers are part of a new unit that strictly does patrol duty. Surprisingly, their 2-year-old Moskvitch seems to function, and their working conditions seem superior to what I have so far seen. They work 12-hour shifts for two days, then have two days off. Their new station, now under construction, will contain a locker room, sauna, shower, gym, shooting range and garage.

They even have their own shrink. “We have a woman psychologist at our station,” Jr. Lt. Nikolai Shliaptsev says. “Sometimes you feel tired, or something goes wrong. She knows when someone needs her. She makes you feel better.”

Until recently, patrol cars were assigned to each police station. “Now they have very few and are used mostly to respond to family disputes or burglaries,” Shliaptsev says. “We assist them on the calls, but basically, we are out patrolling the streets.”

Their territory, just north of the city center, includes woodsy residential streets, from which cars are routinely stolen, as well as the Central Exhibition Center and a major metro stop ringed by numerous kiosks. Most are open until 11 p.m., some all night. “Before, nothing was open at this hour,” Shliaptsev says. “The other night, we noticed two suspicious-looking men from the Caucasus. One started running. He had a submachine gun under his overcoat. We hauled them in.”

But tonight is eerily quiet. “We arrested one hooligan for using four-letter words at a bus stop,” Kulkov offers.

Great. All this crime in Moscow, and all they produce is one guy with a foul mouth? In truth, at that very moment, a crime was at least being discussed , I later learned. Five Brooklyn cops, in Moscow on an exchange program, were in a bar talking of a crime scene they had just witnessed. “There was a dead woman lying on the street,” one officer noted. “Right out in front of a crowd, the cops lifted her skirt and shoved a rectal thermometer up her. You know, to gauge how long she’d been dead. We were shocked. Man, these Moscow cops can be cold.”

Eventually, the three-man patrol stops at the side of a deserted road. Three doors pop open and each man lights a cigarette. No coffee? No doughnuts?

Shliaptsev laughs. “I don’t know what you mean, doughnut . But for coffee, there’s no place to stop. This isn’t like America. A restaurant takes two hours.”

Despite poor pay and growing crime, these officers seem content. “It’s a job for a real man,” Shliaptsev says. “If it’s not us, then who will take the job?”