Serbian Police: neither an ally nor an enemy, but a fact

Author: Branko Čečen, Source: Facebook post of Branko Čečen

In the nineties, it was said that “power rolls through the streets.” It seems to me now that the streets are ours, and that the police are coming as if into enemy territory. I had the opportunity, as a journalist, in the short period after October 5th when the army and police suddenly, by order, became open to independent media, to go through an entire assignment with the intervention brigade from Čukarica, from preparations and meetings to the field. We were heading to the first derby after the one where the police decided not to interfere, and the north and south finally ran onto the field and showed what really interests them on that field. Blood, misery, and pain. That was their game.

The police knew this too. One of them told me how they were putting on their gear in the courtyard of their base on October 5th, which had taken place shortly before this report, while their families, relatives, friends, and random passersby stood on the other side of the fence: “Every time I raise my eyes, everyone is looking me straight in the eye. As soon as they catch my gaze, they say: ‘Watch what you’re doing today, our people are on the street!’ My wife was there with both of our kids, same thing, but she was crying.”

They told me incredible stories from the war in Kosovo. Sloba kept pushing his narrative that it was “an internal matter of Serbia,” so at first he didn’t dare to openly deploy the army (of course, during the war, we still encountered plenty of army units and especially weapons—anti-aircraft guns and light tanks included). All the paramilitary police units, and many others, went through some kind of fast-tracked, shortened infantry training, and then they were thrown into the war against the local guerrilla. Every policeman was marked by that war. Even though the brigade commander at the time told me they turned out to be some kind of global phenomenon due to the minimal percentage of PTSD and other psychological consequences that wars usually produce in surviving participants, they all strongly held to the belief that they had fought and bled for their country, even though that wasn’t really their job. Even today, in all police facilities, you can see on memorial walls the photos of fallen unit members. That tradition is very important to them.

Unfortunately, and logically, for not-so-glorious reasons. Everything, or almost everything else they did in the nineties, wasn’t exactly worth highlighting. Not the fact that you could rent a brigade to evict someone from an apartment (the rates were known), or ruin someone’s café with a raid, nor beating girls’ eyes out with batons (not a figure of speech), nor providing security for river clubs and nightclubs owned by criminals, nor turning a blind eye while privileged mobsters killed more or less innocent people left and right across Serbia and drowned in money from robbery and drugs (like today, for instance), nor the fact that they fought alongside Legija’s and Arkan’s underworld stars and hugged and kissed like brothers when they met (not all of them, but I personally witnessed such scenes multiple times in various headquarters and warzones). And none of that means they weren’t authentic patriots who fought for their country. Truly not.

They told me about the meeting before October 5th, where a police general finally said: “And if that doesn’t help, then you know what.” Which meant opening fire with live ammunition. On us. I won’t use names now, I don’t know what happened to those people, but one of the commanders stood up and asked: “What exactly does that mean, general? Put it in writing, sign it, and stamp it, if that’s our job today.” As far as I remember the story, the general just left without answering. He was tried in The Hague, and the brigade from Čukarica didn’t open fire. Some other policemen did.

For that derby I went to with them, they planned for 25 injured, one ambulance was reserved for serious injuries or life-threatening cases among them, another unit was ready to quickly join in if there were bigger riots, and fuel and money expenditures were also calculated. Some policemen were preparing like athletes—physically and mentally. They focused by staring at the wall, stretching, or simply whistling something while gazing into the distance. In any case, they hardly spoke to each other. Even though it was just a derby, albeit after real riots at the previous one, almost none of them gave off the impression of someone indifferent, going to a regular workday, although there were jokers trying to boost their colleagues’ morale. The tension was felt in the chest. I felt it, and I wasn’t going to fight with anyone.

When we disembarked from the vehicles near Marakana, we landed in a tense, frenzied chaos. Thousands of people around us, noise, commotion, groups of “fans” roaming around like little SA units, chanting in groups and threatening everyone and everything in their path, especially “Šiptars” and “Gravediggers,” who were on the other side of the stadium. At the moment we arrived, the largest group of “fans” was screaming in front of the Red Star administrative building and breaking windows with stones. The unit I was with didn’t receive orders to do anything about it, and they soon stopped and headed toward the stands. Toward us. Then about five hundred of them passed by us, the unit lined up against a wall (no room for retreat) in a cordon, much more poorly equipped than today’s units, scorned after Sloba’s fall, with still-fresh memories of retreating before the people and the humiliation of physical defeat. The “fans” felt very, very free. And not in a “let me offer you flowers” kind of way, if you know what I mean.

I was standing next to the commander in front of the cordon. He was a calm, confident, experienced older leader who projected a “I know what I’m doing” vibe. A real commander. And the “fans”... I’ll be very honest now, because that’s the only way I can be sincere: I have never seen such physiognomies, such destructive trance, such concentrated hatred and primitive aggression—not even among soldiers at the front. Never and nowhere. I was scared. They scared me. Even though I had been through the nineties, even though a Partizan fan leader once held a gun to my thigh before the NATO bombing, before later cheerfully posing with his buddies for my newspaper with captured, bloodied Red Star flags and bloodied baseball bats. Don’t ask me how I managed to change that relationship, it’s not pleasant for me to remember those things, and it wouldn’t be pleasant for you to read.

The commander, around whom (and around me) the “fans” were passing, since he deliberately stood in their way and thus calmed his men by showing exactly zero fear or concern and complete control of the situation, noticed that I was on edge, so he said to me, with his hands behind his back, rising on his toes and lowering down like some high school teacher during a lecture, as we both looked at a raging, half-a-meter-away fat bald man with eyes very close to each other and deeply set in his head: “They’re all our kids.” It was a masterful blend of irony bordering on cynicism, a reminder of the importance of humanity in difficult situations, and a calming message from a man for whom this wasn’t the first ride on this particular merry-go-round.

In the end, we didn’t even enter the stadium; there was no need. Apart from a few local skirmishes among youth nurtured on Serbian football for enmity, violence, and crime, in which the unit I was with wasn’t involved, everything went peacefully. Of course, the article would’ve been better if there had been intervention, but I was never the kind of journalist who wished for chaos just for a good story. I’m afraid of the things worth fearing. And I think I’m lucky for that. I probably wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t have that control mechanism inside me—either I wouldn’t be a journalist anymore, or I simply wouldn’t be. But I knew how, or at least liked, to write a good story even without blood. And I learned a lot on that assignment (and some others), which is why I’m writing this.

1. The police are afraid too. They fear a mass attack. If the crowd is large enough compared to the police unit and moves decisively, the unit doesn’t stand a chance. They’ll break a lot of civilians, they’ll hold out longer than expected, but once their cordon breaks, each of them has to deal with 20 or more people. The experience from the riots during Sloba’s overthrow was still fresh. I believe the images of police officers who at one moment confidently fired into the air to disperse people around someone they were arresting, and then, an hour and a half later, were literally kneeling and crying before citizens joyfully carrying Kalashnikovs out of a burning police station—those are things the police, at least institutionally, still remember. They’re aggressive because their best chance to avoid injury is to scare us, shock us with brutality, and make us think while watching someone being beaten or arrested: “I don’t want that to happen to me.” So we step away, which is their goal. So, they’re aggressive because they’re scared, with a few exceptions. There are also those who love to beat and maim; they exist among them, just like in almost any randomly selected group. I remember one who, on Branko’s Bridge in a winter night of ’96, was stretching—especially his right arm, which held a baton the whole time—in the same motion tennis players use before a match, then did a few push-ups on the bridge railing, smiling widely in anticipation of the personal satisfaction to come. So he wouldn’t pull something in his shoulder when, which happened literally fifteen minutes later, he launched a wild attack on some students, hitting everyone he could, with full force, straight in the head. That was one of the most brutal police attacks I witnessed—and I’ve witnessed many. Unfortunately.

2. By now, it should be clear to everyone that the police will not “join the people.” I hope we’ve all learned that lesson again, unfortunately. Jovo Kapičić, lifelong policeman, former commander of the Goli Otok camp, and later head of State Security (interestingly revered in Montenegro in retirement for those truly unique CV items), explained it to my colleague Perica Gunjić and me in the 1990s in Podgorica like this (imagine the accent yourself): “Do you know what the police are? You know that donkey? With ears?” (he made a donkey ear motion with both hands) “It does what it’s told and keeps doing it until it collapses.” In the police and army, there is no “option two.” Only one order. Everyone is trained to follow it until another one comes—and that’s it. There is no choice. Not even in thought.

3. The police always have a plan. It doesn’t always go how they imagined, but they have reinforcements for the central cordon (which itself is divided into sub-units with specific tasks), at least one unit waiting to catch us where the cordon drives us (in bigger protests, these are numerous units with precise tasks), undercover officers among us, intel on organizers' plans (via insiders, surveillance, etc.), backup units in reserve, usually in a nearby building, ambulances just for their injured, vehicles for every officer in the field plus extras, live ammunition in pistol magazines, clear tasks and jurisdictions, plan “B” and “C” if time allowed, and worst-case scenario plans (water cannons, armored vehicles, sonic weapons, and more), drones, cameras, microphones, equipment to eavesdrop on all phones within 50 meters of a suitcase, entire HQs that strategize and manage the operation, tear gas, rubber bullets (now metal-cored and potentially lethal up close), stun grenades... It seems they’re not quite so prepared this time (they’re not lacking gear or vehicles), maybe their numbers and the unpredictability of blockade locations and protests are “stretching” them thin, I hear they’re forming special units of “loyal” officers for harsher crackdowns, and there’s talk of thugs becoming cops overnight who don’t know commands or protocols... Who knows. But if at all possible, they come prepared.

4. I hear many officers are suddenly on sick leave and leadership is trying to solve it, of course through coercion. If such an officer ends up in a cordon—he’ll beat people without much restraint. Because he has no other choice and wants to go home to his family in one piece. He’ll be uncomfortable, but the unit is the unit, the guy next to him is his comrade, and he’ll protect him while they’re in the unit, and he only has one head. Better someone else’s than his. The only other option is to quit. And the job market isn’t exactly screaming for policemen. There are no private police forces to transfer to, at least not on the legal side.

5. Many come from towns around Belgrade and their, often agricultural, families can’t afford to lose that salary. Once, I was on patrol with an intervention unit and out of the four of them, two were allowed to sleep in the car (when I promised not to write about it and there were no calls) because it was summer, harvest time, and the two were rushing home from shifts to work in the fields with their parents, so they didn’t have time to rest. The mindset with which they entered the police force was rarely “I want to chase thieves and contribute to society” (I asked every policeman about their motives on each assignment). No. For them, it’s hard work (and it is, from what I’ve seen, extremely hard), but they’re used to hard. On the other hand, it’s a secure job with a steady paycheck. Those are the motives. Few in the units I spent days with, or those I was with in Kosovo and around Preševo, Medveđa, and Bujanovac, had clear ideas about politics, society, the Constitution, rights, or justice. Just basic nationalist, inflammatory simplifications from politicians and commanders who receive prepared texts to deliver to units as a kind of political justification for the orders they are to carry out, plus all kinds of rationalizations that lead them toward justifying those orders. Like going to Kosovo to fight the guerrilla, for example, or to beat me. And they go, for the same reasons they now beat and arrest us. Orders. The unit. The job. The paycheck. Someone else thinks, I’m here to carry out orders. They’re all the same (the authorities). They change, we stay. That’s the mantra each of them can use to explain to themselves why they do what they do. At least temporarily. That’s my experience with them. And we talked in trenches and bunkers across Kosovo and southern Serbia. When the talk was honest.

6. Some current officers own cafes, rental apartments, stakes in new developments, stores, and kiosks. They didn’t earn that with their salaries or overtime. That’s always existed in the police, at least since Sloba. I don’t have to explain how you earn that if you’re in uniform. By looking the other way or doing big favors for people with money, often criminals. A cop often finds himself in a situation where his team is doing something wrong. He won’t correct them. At best, he’ll try to switch units, positions, or departments, but that separates him from “his crew,” the network of contacts he relies on in private life too. Mostly, he’ll go along. Just like his buddies in the force. Of course they have moral dilemmas, but there’s always mantra #5, and if his guys sense he’s unwilling, that can be a serious problem. Because that cop’s future depends on which crew he’s in and whether he has one at all, and now he’s also a witness. Horrible things happen to cops inside the force too—it’s a hierarchical organization where it’s easier to crush a man than in any normal job. And who do you report to afterward? The police? Whistleblowers like Predrag Simonović are destroyed people who didn’t kill themselves only because they’re extraordinary individuals. Some, like him, have shown that despite everything they can be something else and do something else, but the cost is horrific. We haven’t brought our police to the point where what we ask of them is as “expensive” as being a dissident within the police. I hope we never do—those are truly extreme situations. This regime will fall before that, hopefully. Then we’ll work on changes in that area.

7. Police officers don’t face consequences. That doesn’t happen in Serbia—except today, if by chance they go crazy and start doing their job, like Slobodan Milenković (Little Senta) and his team. That’s not accidental, it’s nurtured—police that don’t answer to the law are blindly obedient. But also brutal and disrespectful of the law—because there are no consequences. No government here has shined in creating a system of accountability in the police, because they’ve always wanted them on their side, and because “a crow doesn’t peck out another’s eyes…” As long as that’s the case, they have no strong reason to listen to what we shout in the street. Only to obey orders.

8. There is a culture of violence among some officers. They’re proud of beatings and, more or less, criminal behavior. That line has long been crossed. Nothing has directed them toward another approach. Just like in sports—teams like to have a few madmen in their ranks. Sometimes such people are needed, even crucial. Like when they fought in Kosovo. Now, the rest are ashamed of them, but… it’s too late now. Skulls are being cracked open on kids who are then handcuffed to hospital beds. And criminals are police allies. I hope the police still have some pride and conviction, and that they’re at least ashamed of that. It won’t help us much now, but maybe it will soon.

9. Vučić has been preparing the police for this from the beginning of his rule, haunted by the fear he experienced when Milošević fell. He survived, but he tried to shield himself from the same fate—as if that’s possible when you view other living beings as insects whose lives only matter as tax-fund sources you rob. And it happened again. But the commanders I know are mostly indebted, ugly, and responsible for various horrors and thefts. Police salaries are good, they’re even handing out apartments, which wasn’t common in Serbian history. They’re equipped like in a sci-fi film. Why buy sonic cannons, if not to push us back into our obedient, passive lives under dictatorship? It won’t collapse just like that. If we keep up the pressure, definitely. If we back off—why would it collapse?

Enough. And what I’m writing here has already gone on too long. But I’ve been thinking about these things longer than this unrestrained, imbecilic, anti-civilizational, tragically immoral, and criminal police abuse has lasted. They don’t see it that way—they think they’re super nice. Not only because they know they can do much, much worse, but also because the problems we’re causing them are big, and they could really do without that. They don’t consider themselves participants in social processes, only tools of power, and they’d love not to have to do what they do. Not because they think we’re right (although many probably do), but because it’s hot, on the edge of explosion, and with no foreseeable end or clear solution.

As for me, I’m not writing this to justify the police or any possible violence against them. I’m just writing what’s buzzing in my head while calming my pulse after witnessing an arrest or violence at some blockade. I’m racking my brain for information that would help me better understand what, how, and why things are happening, looking for a way out of all this. And in that search, I don’t count on the police as allies. Nor as enemies. But as a fact.

As for the police, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. The regime pushed them forward to defend it from children and ordinary people who don’t even physically attack anyone and demand something every cop swore an oath to protect. All that scum with badges, more than anyone dared even think, all those traders of our fates for money and the right of the strongest, normalize arresting and beating innocents, and with some pleasure unleash primitive evil of power over ordinary people, while all that is watched over and secured not by hundreds, but thousands of those silent uniformed active participants in our downfall. I don’t have the time or space inside me even to pity them much. Their skulls aren’t being cracked, sonic cannons aren’t fired at them, they aren’t arrested without cause, their lives aren’t ruined by detention and crazy indictments. All that we endure. From them. But I don’t hate them either. I don’t wish them harm.

I never swore an oath to anyone, least of all signed one like all of them. I don’t need a piece of paper to behave morally and within the law. I’m not defending a regime that has vomited over laws and the Constitution they swore to protect, and now literally destroys them. They are.

That salary has become truly, truly bloody these days. And it will get bloodier.