Prosecution has No Control over Police Operatives

Predrag Milovanovic (Photo: Print Screen You Tube)

A member of the State Prosecutorial Council, Predrag Milovanovic, has warned that deficiencies in the Serbian legislative framework have deprived the prosecution service of genuine control over the operative police sectors, and without their cooperation, it would be “a head with no arms and legs.”

“The prosecutorial service has no operative and technical capacities to collect evidence on the ground, requesting the police instead to perform certain actions in order to detect crimes and identify suspects,” Milovanovic said in an interview with BETA, underlining that he was sharing a personal position about the problems arising from the existing relationship between prosecution and police, arranged as it is.

“A pre-investigation procedure is of substantial importance for the direction a criminal procedure might take thereon, which is why the relationship between the prosecution service and the police is crucial.

Milovanovic explained that police officials, after they file a criminal report to the prosecutor, seldom care about the outcome of the proceedings following the report, because filing an ungrounded report, which the prosecutor would dismissed for some legal reason, was not going to reflect negatively on their performance. He said it was “a paradox that erases the responsibility of the police officer or team handling a case, which needs to change,” underlining that “joint work comes with shared responsibility.”