After the tragedy in Lubin.Doctors warned the police that choking was killing.The guidelines went to the drawer

Daniel Flis, OKO.press: Igor Stachowiak died after the intervention of Wrocław policemen in 2016. All of Poland saw how they tortured him with a taser earlier in the bathroom at the police station. On August 6, 2021 in Lubin, 34-year-old Bartek Sokołowski dies after police intervention. According to the family attorney, he had a crushed larynx. Nothing has changed in the police?

Piotr Kubaszewski, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights: Not much. For at least a few years I have seen complete stagnation. In the context of the Lubin case, I am reminded of the Zamość case from 2014. The mentally ill boy was to be detained, not for the first time. He left a note saying he was going to kill himself, my mother called the police. The policemen - dressed in civilian clothes - were to make the arrest in the most delicate way possible, precisely because she was a vulnerable person due to her illness.

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Bartek was not mentally ill, but he was under the influence of drugs. His mother told me that when she called 911 that morning, she told the dispatcher. Police officers were also at their house the previous day along with paramedics. The doctor then gave Bartek a sedative. Besides, the policemen from Lubin knew that he was addicted. They intervened on his behalf many times. One of them was supposed to "take it out" on him.

Both cases are very similar. People with mental illness and those under the influence of psychoactive substances should be treated in a special way. And even the police have tried to develop such a method.

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What were these trials about?

In May 2015, the commander-in-chief appointed a team "for optimizing training procedures". It was to analyze the deaths of 16 people who were under the influence of drugs or had mental disorders as a result of police intervention. The aforementioned case from Zamość was one of such cases.

In December 2015, the team issued an opinion that the use of certain techniques can be fatal. And developed guidelines. There was a demand from the doctors that the police should call an ambulance every time so that the doctor could administer a sedative. That they call for reinforcements and intervene with four people, not two. Rather not take action, but observe, unless someone actually threatens someone's safety or property. If not - wait for the ambulance and do not use pressure, because people after drugs are unlikely to follow orders anyway.

What happened to these guidelines?

They're probably in a drawer at the Police Headquarters. They didn't turn into anything concrete. The results of the police experts' work were sent to the provincial headquarters, but not the opinion of the doctors. I know about its existence from the files of the case of Igor Stachowiak.

I dare say that none of the riot policemen have any idea that there was once a team that called for a ban on neck pressure. It's not the rank and file police's fault, it's the system's fault that they're not trained enough.

Recently, in August 2020, the basic police course was shortened for the duration of the epidemic from 144 to 71 days, and then to 64 days. After such a course, a policeman goes out into the streets and has to deal with various situations. And earlier, this training was quite short compared to other European countries. The policemen do not know how to deal with, for example, people with mental disorders. So they do what they can.

In 2018, the police school in Słupsk prepared a guide entitled "Interventions for people with mental disorders or uncontrollable behavior for other reasons". He also advised not to use force until the ambulance arrived and warned that prolonged compression of the neck could lead to death. In May 2019, police officers received such a guide in digital form "for official use", but they were not trained in it. I learned about it from the files of the case of Tomasz Wróblewski, who died three months after the dissemination of this guide during the police intervention in Ełk. He also called the police and warned that he was under the influence of drugs. And he also died, strangled by two policemen who called an ambulance too late. The prosecutor's office discontinued the case.

Probably this guide was written in response to the Stachowiak case. Because everything in our country works in such spurts. When something happens, everyone bends over it, debates what to do and even starts doing something, but then they forget about it and wait until the next time something happens again. And it's been like that for as long as I can remember, and I've been dealing with police violence cases for 13 years.

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But if all riot police officers received such a guide, at least they won't be able to say that they didn't know how to behave. In the Stachowiak case, one of the lines of defense of the accused, and then convicted, was insufficient training. The policeman who used the taser said that it was presented during the training as a safe means of direct coercion.

After the case of Lubin, there may be an upheaval again. What should change apart from the training system?

In 2013, a postulate came out from the main headquarters to record police interventions. So that the entire path of a person during the arrest, his contact with police officers could be reconstructed. The first camera was supposed to be in the police uniform, the second in the car, the third in the interrogation room. It was a strategy prepared for the Ministry of the Interior by the police and external experts. A year later, the postulate disappeared from the strategy of the Ministry of the Interior.

The main command rightly argued that the mere fact of recording with a camera on the uniform would cool down emotions on both sides.

Police officers in the United States have such cameras. They recorded the intervention where George Floyd died last year. The policeman was convicted of manslaughter. And what is it like in Europe?

A few years ago they were introduced in the UK. There, the policemen have vests with built-in lenses. Studies have shown that cameras have significantly contributed to reducing the number of complaints against police officers by citizens.

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First of all, there are probably fewer disputes. Secondly, everyone is aware that everything has been recorded and can be played back. Only there it works so that the police officer puts on this vest with the camera, it is turned on and that's it. Nothing turns on, nothing turns off. He ends his service, comes to a special room, there he is connected to a computer with a cable, it is recorded and secured. And that's how it should be.

In December 2017, a pilot test of cameras on uniforms was launched. A total of 180 cameras were given to the garrisons of the capital, Podlasie and Lower Silesia. How many are there now?

In May 2020, Minister Wąsik, in response to a parliamentary question, wrote that there are 2,290 of them, but only 1,009 fall under prevention. The rest went to the traffic police, and there are hardly any beatings or cases of torture. Meanwhile, 97,000 people work in the police force. people, including over 60,000 in prevention. An additional 3,100 cameras are now being tendered for, but this is still a slow-build purchase, not a firm decision that everyone who patrols the streets should wear a camera.

The sad thing about the system is that we only really talk about things that have somehow been recorded. In the case of Stachowiak, it was a taser camera.

We are also talking about the Lubin case only because we have a film shot by a neighbor and from a CCTV camera.

There would be no objective evidence. It is hard to expect courts to convict policemen without such evidence.

There have already been doubts about the course of events. The local command claims that Bartek was still breathing when the police handed him over to the emergency services. Paramedics from the ambulance - that he was already dead when they arrived.

These police officers are potential defendants in this case. In a way, it's natural for them to defend themselves. However, the system should be built in such a way that what they do doesn't really matter.

If we had the footage from the cameras on their uniforms, it would be clear how the intervention took place, whether resuscitation was undertaken, etc. These are key things from the point of view of assessing the behavior of these policemen.

You as a journalist, me as a human rights lawyer and all of us as citizens should demand cameras that record police interventions. Cameras on police uniforms, in police cars, in interrogation rooms that are always on and always recording. And then the material from them is well protected.

I cannot understand why in the 21st century all interrogations are not mandatory recorded. It's kind of absurd.

In American movies we always see that the interrogations are taped. I would love for this to be the case not only in American movies, but also in real life, and in Poland.

In the case of Stachowiakfour policemen were sentenced to 2 to 2.5 years in prison. Have you managed to convict anyone else?

We did it. There was a report of the Ombudsman, analyzing all cases of convictions, and there the spokesman took juicy quotes from the justifications of the sentences. It was classic torture in virtually every case. From 2008 to 2016, 42 police officers were convicted for their use. Convictions, however, are rather exceptions. In the Helsinki Foundation, I dealt with violence in the police for 13 years, and the case of Stachowiak was probably the only win at the national level.

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We had a case of typical torture from Lidzbark Warmiński in 2013, where even the prosecutor's office stated that the policemen forced the men to kneel on a chair facing the wall and beat them on the feet with batons. It is not known which policeman was beating specifically, so the prosecutor's office dropped the case. We won it only in Strasbourg, where the Court found a violation of Art. 3 of the Convention, i.e. the prohibition of torture, but in Poland it was not possible to convict anyone specifically by name.

They could not be convicted because there were no cameras in the interrogation room. But also through a police conspiracy of silence. All the policemen who were at the station that day claimed that they had not seen or heard anything. And it's impossible that they couldn't hear the screams of tortured people. They heard but did nothing about it.

The police always hide colleagues?

I think very often. I also remember the case in Olsztyn, where complaints about violence suddenly started to come to the police station. And indeed there were classic tortures, including extortion of confessions by shocks with a stun gun. There were so many complaints that the management of the Olsztyn police, probably the internal affairs office, set up a wiretap and a camera there, which no one knew about. And everything that happened there was recorded.

In addition to sentences for torture, there were also accusations for false testimony against subsequent policemen. Because the recordings showed that a given policeman opened the door, saw what was going on there, but denied everything in the criminal proceedings.

It looks like you can't convict a police officer of torture without good recordings.

I will be watching the case from Lubin with interest, because bringing a policeman to justice in general is extremely difficult in Polish realities. And it is practically impossible to convict him of contributing to someone's death.

Should they be convicted of manslaughter?

I don't say that, I don't know that. In the case of Stachowiak, it was interesting that the prosecutor's office quickly divided it into several proceedings. Thanks to this, what could not be hidden after the material edited by Wojciech Bojanowski, i.e. bullying, was isolated. In a way, public opinion was satisfied, but only part of the case was judged.

The thread of leading to death got stuck in the prosecutor's office in Wrocław and ended with a final discontinuation. So please note that even in such a case, so electrifying and stimulating to public opinion, no one was brought to court for causing the death of a detained person.

This is also very interesting from a purely legal point of view, because the policeman is the so-called guarantor.

What does it mean?

Generally, there is a principle in criminal law that a consequential crime can only be committed by action, not by omission. But the guarantor of the non-occurrence of the effect may also commit them by omission. Such a guarantor is a policeman during an intervention, a mother in relation to her child, a doctor in a hospital, etc. These are people who have a special legal obligation to prevent the consequences.

And a consequential crime is, for example, unintentional manslaughter. Potentially, police officers could be held responsible for involuntary manslaughter simply by failing to provide first aid. And this may also happen in the case of Mr. Bartek from Lubin, because the available films do not show that the officers resuscitated him.

While I am in no way saying that in this case the police officers should be convicted for the result - this requires careful investigation. I am only stating that it is possible, on the other hand, so far I have not seen any progress in this direction.

Why this difficulty in convicting? Why did the prosecutors not see the responsibility of the policemen for the death of Stachowiak?

The court crushed this dismissal of the prosecutor's office. He also very broadly referred to the fact that he did not understand why this thread was separated. After all, it was one act stretched over time. The whole event began on the Wrocław market square and ended not even in the toilet, where he was smitten, but later, in the room during the scuffle that ensued. And in the criminal proceedings that resulted in the conviction, only the toilet events were dealt with.

Assessing the legitimacy of discontinuing these proceedings, the court referred the case for further investigation by law enforcement authorities, not leaving a dry thread on the separation of these proceedings. But judge yourself, life yourself. The prosecutor's office dropped it again.

It's hard to say where this weakness comes from. That's a topic for another conversation. About the conspiracy of silence in the police and some such reluctance of the system to convict policemen.

Piotr Kubaszewski – lawyer, coordinator of the Legal Intervention Program of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. Author of publications in the field of criminal law and human rights, including a co-author of a commentary to selected criminal provisions of the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction. An expert in the field of criminal law, disciplinary proceedings, anti-torture mechanisms and legal intervention in the field of human rights.

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Police and services, Affairs, Bartek Sokołowski police brutality Igor Stachowiak Tomasz Wróblewski

Daniel Flis

OKO.press journalist. A graduate of philosophy at the University of Warsaw and the Polish School of Reportage. Previously, he wrote for "Gazeta Wyborcza". He was nominated for journalism awards.