"Ukraine Pins Hopes for Change on Fresh-Faced Police Recruits"
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR, The New York Times
"LVIV, Ukraine — When officers of the new patrol police recently arrested a young, unemployed actor named Vladimir for a drunken midday nap on Market Square — the leafy center of this picturesque, cobblestoned city in western Ukraine — two giggling friends asked to snap a selfie with the detainee.
A fit, fresh-faced police officer consented, allowing them to clamber into the back seat of his white Toyota Prius patrol car while the disheveled Vladimir soon began flirting with the female battalion commander. The scene was a marked contrast with the old police force, an all-male preserve whose officers regularly punched first and then asked questions.
“Soft,” pronounced Sgt. Mykola Lozynsky, a veteran at the station where Vladimir, 26, was taken for booking. “They don’t know how to work.” It is a common appraisal by members of the old police force, known as the militia, of the thousands of novice officers deployed in major Ukrainian cities starting last July. There should be at least 10,000 new officers by the end of the year in a country where a patchwork of law enforcement agencies has about 140,000 uniformed officers.
Much is riding on the neophyte force, which is often praised as the only tangible sign of change 20 months after protests toppled the government."
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To their myriad fans, the new officers embody the right kind of change: idealistic, helpful, diverse, clean and drilled endlessly that public service is their main task.
To skeptics, they represent what is fundamentally wrong with the current attempt to overhaul Ukraine: a superficial change to the patina of urban life while venality and incompetence endure behind every government facade."
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