Armed robberies, shootouts and other firearm-related crimes committed in Armenia increased sharply last year and in the first five months of 2024, raising more questions about police reforms declared by the Armenian government.
Law-enforcement authorities reported 45 such crimes in the five-month period, up from 27 in January-May 2023. They similarly soared by 40 percent, to 94, during the whole of last year. The official statistics is backed up by increased news reports of shooting incidents that often involve reputed crime figures and end in fatalities.
“This testifies to the very serious shortcomings and impotence of the police system,” Daniel Ioannisian, a well-known civic activist monitoring the security apparatus, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Ioannisian insisted that the Armenian police has become less competent, professional and efficient in the last several years. Citing research conducted by his Union of Informed Citizens (UIC) on the basis of police data, he claimed that only one in four murder suspects in the country has stood trial.
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“The police have become much weaker in recent years, and there is more nepotism there than there was under Vladimir Gasparian,” Ioannisian said, referring to the controversial man who led the national police service during former President Serzh Sarkisian’s rule.
Deputy Interior Minister Arpine Sargsian admitted “problems” with law enforcement in the country when she spoke during a roundtable discussion in Yerevan last week. The ongoing police reforms will help to address them, Sargsian said without clarifying just how the authorities will improve the fight against gun violence and other serious crimes.
The UIC and a number of other Armenian non-governmental organizations have been very critical of the stated reform efforts. Ioannisian said that the police are not undergoing genuine reforms.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly said that his administration is successfully reforming the Armenian law-enforcement bodies with the help of the European Union and the United States. In particular, Pashinian has touted the creation of the Patrol Service, a Western-funded police force which was supposed to introduce Western practices in road policing, street patrol and crowd control.
The Patrol Service has failed to reverse a steady increase in deadly road accidents in Armenia, however. Police data shows that they killed 378 people last year, up from 321 deaths recorded in 2022.
Armenia’s overall crime rate has risen significantly since the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power. The annual number of officially registered crimes there doubled between 2017 and 2023.
There has been a particularly sharp increase in drug trafficking cases. They more than doubled last year, according to the police.
