Is covert surveillance by road police legitimate?
Police patrols in Minsk have found a new technique of fighting those who violate the moving rules. They use an unmarked vehicle, equipped with speed radars and video cameras. At a certain distance, a regular car is accompanied by a marked road patrol vehicle. Speeding drivers are stopped during traffic.
Ihar Vanitski, the deputy chief of the National Road Police Inspectorate, told the European Radio for Belarus that surveillance is used by traffic patrol officers across the nation.
“It was initiated by the traffic police officers in Minsk and later spread across the whole country”, he said.
When asked if the police violate laws by using these covert methods, Vanitski said:
“The law allows us to use covert devices to control the traffic regulations”.
The results of this action will be evaluated in two-three weeks. But police officials say today already that covert surveillance is much more efficient than ordinary patrols. On February 4 alone, 298 speeding drivers were stopped.
Previously, road patrols were banned from hiding behind a tree or a road pole when they targeted drivers with speed radars. But, according to Syarhey Mikhaylau, an editor with the car newspaper Auto-Business, officers followed an oral order from their commanders. So, when they hide inside unmarked cars, they don’t formally violate laws. But Mikhaylau says he doesn’t understand the point of this action.
“It is hard to grasp the goals of this action. What prevents them from doing the same thing from a usually marked police vehicle? When drivers see a police car, they try to be more disciplined and drive more slowly. Do the police want to scare drivers or create nervousness on roads? What is it for?”
In the view of the expert, the traffic police should focus on prevention, not on detention. But that’s something that they don’t seem to be doing very well.
