Police Roll Out Plan to Improve Reputation
Russia's Interior Ministry has started a nationwide public relations campaign to burnish its tarnished image, posting billboards showing respectable cops and Internet advertisements promoting reported acts of police heroism.
Oleg Yelnikov, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said: "We couldn't sit and wait while there is a flow of negative information. It is not clear why society doesn't react to cases where police officers risk their lives for people." He added that more than 400 police were killed while on duty in 2009.
The campaign comes as Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev is preparing to report back to President Dmitry Medvedev on his plans to reform the ministry, which has been seriously discredited in the public eye by a wave of violent crime and corruption scandals.