In 2004 after Micheil Saakashvili became the president of Georgia the heads of all the defence and law enforcement agencies were fired. Traffic police became one of the main aims of the reformators. New president presens an ultimatum – if after two days the bribery doesn’t stop – all the police officers are going to be fired, too. And what came out of it?

Every policeman who was seen to take 50-dollar bribe was sent to jail for 10 years. For the first day of the new law about 15 000 policemen lost their jobs. After next few weeks – again 15 000.

About 3 months Georgia lived without traffic police.

The new young policemen were trained and the road police staff was renewed for 85%. New fast cars were bought for the new generation of police.

One of the new police departments. Their main destinctive feature – full transparence so that people may see what’s going on inside.

The other aspect of raising the quality of new police was implemented by increasing the salaries. In comparison to 2004 the salary of a policeman is now 23 times higher.

As most of the old heads were fired, the new young policemen didn’t feel the pressure of the old corrupted police model.

If earlier a young man who wanted to be a policeman needed to give a bribe to become one, now there is 4-stage recruitment system consisting of numerous tests.

Apart from watching over the traffic police officers have to react to every other crime like theft or fight. The patrols are placed so that a car can get to any place within 3 minutes. If a car is occupied a neighboring one will help. There are no more old standards like “It’s not my district”. For such words one can be easily fired now.

Location: Georgia

via chistoprudov