Moscow policeman sentenced to life for drunken shooting spree that killed 2 people

Moscow policeman gets life for fatal shootings

MOSCOW — A Moscow court sentenced a police precinct chief to life in prison Friday for a drunken shooting spree that killed two people and wounded seven.

Maj. Denis Yevsyukov opened fire last April inside and outside a Moscow supermarket. He killed a cab driver and wounded several passers-by in the street, then gunned down a cashier and a customer in the market. He then held two dozen people hostage for several hours and shot at police officers before they disarmed and detained him.

In footage from the supermarket’s security cameras, the uniformed Yevsyukov was seen cold-bloodedly shooting the cashier, wounding several customers and forcing others at gunpoint to a storage room where he promised to “spill their brains on the wall.”

Yevsyukov said the spree was provoked by a falling out with his wife, a popular singer, at his birthday party and insisted he had a memory lapse during the killings.

The judge, however, found his actions “deliberate and sane.”

The shootings sparked nationwide outrage and helped prompt Kremlin-ordered police reforms that envisaged cuts in the number of police officers and new recruitment policies.

On Thursday, President Dmitry Medvedev said about 15,000 cases of police corruption were logged last year, which he called “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Government critics have dismissed the reforms as superficial.

The changes proposed by Medvedev did not “undermine the foundation of shadow police business,” analyst Pavel Chikov said in an opinion piece published by the independent Gazeta.ru. He was referring to widespread corruption among police officers, as well as police violence and abuse.

He said authorities seek to punish and imprison critics in police ranks who decry the structural crisis in the Interior Ministry.

In late January, police arrested a police major who posted three videos on YouTube in which he said he was promised a promotion in return for jailing an innocent person. The officer, who also accused his superiors of forcing officers to fake reports on unsolved crimes, was charged with fraud.

Human rights groups say officers routinely use trumped-up charges, torture and blackmail against members of the public.

A nationwide poll conducted this week by the respected Levada Center showed that two thirds of Russians do not trust police officers and 81 percent think that abuses and corruption in the Interior Ministry present a serious problem.

The poll showed that 62 percent of Russians believe that a recent surge in reports on police violence is “evidence of degeneration that is impossible to hide.”