Cop Killers

Spectacular showdowns among local criminals have long ago stopped being a surprise for Belgrade's citizens. Even bomb raids, something of a local specialty, are no longer a novelty. Members of rival gangs kill and get

killed all over the city, day and night, regardless of the witnesses and passers-by who frequently become innocent victims. The citizens have started getting used to even the unthinkable - murders of policemen. However, the crime committed in the Marijane Gregoran Street, Belgrade, has shocked everyone: it is hard to rememeber another case of someone gathering information on a policeman, ambushing and subsequently killing him in broad daylight.

Dragan Radisic, 34, an inspector in the homicide department of the Belgrade police, was killed on Thursday, 1 February, outside his Belgrade apartment as he stepped out of the building to buy groceries in the nearby store. It

was early in the morning and he had been gone for too long, so his wife, Tatjana, went looking for him and found the body. The police, upon arrival, found 18 shells of a 7.65mm calibre. Unofficial sources say that all 18 bullets fired at Radisic hit the target, which leads to the conclusion that he was shot from close, if not point blanc range. The executor had fired a few extra bullets in the head of the dead inspector, to make sure he is dead. He probably used an automatic scorpion handgun with a silencer,which is why no one heard the shooting. Radisic's body remained outside the entrance of the building for too long, probably not less than half-an-hour.

If the quite logical assumption that at least one witness (the media say there were seven) saw the body but went on minding his own business without telling anyone turns out to be true, it will only confirm the sad story about the local mentality and level of civil conciousness. Inspector Dragan Radisic had worked in the police for ten years. He started

as a crime technician and spent some time in Kosovo before joining the homicide department of the Belgrade police. His colleagues say he was "clean" and that he worked a lot. His funeral was attended by about 1,000 persons, but Serbian interior minister Zoran Sokolovic was not one of them.

A promise was made that the assassination would not go unpunished and that his collegaues would try to comfort, as much as possible, his wife and two daughters, aged two and four, he left behind. The investigation judge, Dobrivoje Gerasimovic, has ordered an inquiry into all cases Radisic was working on recently and interrogations of all those who were connected to them in any way. That indicates the prime suspect of the police could be a criminal Radisic was after. The late inspector often worked on complicated cases and had a broad network of informers in the crime organization. From it, he allegedly received a number of warnings in the recent past to "cool off" for a while.

On the other hand, a criminal trying to eliminate a policeman hot on his heels certainly wouldn't fire 18 bullets, or pay someone to do it. The very manner of the execution speaks for a kind of a "personal attitude", pointing to hatred and brutality rather then cold-blooded professionalism. The media can only guess and speculate as the investigation is still in progress. The entire task force is on its feet, which is only logical in a case like this one. Tesnion and anxiety have been made all the more apparent by the fact that a reporter of the daily Vecernje Novosti, a privileged newspaper with official police information, had his camera taken away from him while he was taking photographs of the crime scene. The matter was settled only after an intervention by chief of the Belgrade police, Petar Zekovic.

It is quite interesting that Radisic's murder occurred only a few days after Predrag Janjic, also known as "Cikara", was sentenced to death for shooting dead a pursuing policeman, Radoljub Lukovic, known as "Charlie", and wounding another four with a hand granade in a Belgrade park on March 13 last year. While writing about Radisic's murder, newspapers close to the authorities dwelled on the crime which happened in the park quite a bit, but were for some reason unwilling to remind of a similar one which occurred shortly afterwards. Four days after the death of Lukovic, another policeman, Goran Radulovic, was killed in the Svetozara Markovica street when he asked one Zeljko Maksimovic, known as "Maha", to produce some idenitification. Instead, Maksimovic pulled a gun and fired four shots at inspector Radulovic, the last one in his head. He turned himself in later and said he had acted in self-defence after a man who approached him told him to put his hands up and tried to draw something from his waist.

At that time, pro-government media stood united in lending support to Maksimovic's theory. Even these days, when they remind of the incident, they are reluctant to state how inspector Radulovic was killed and, for that matter, who shot him. Not to the surprise of many - Maksimovic was an important figure in the security system of the Jugoskandik bank, the bodyguard of a prominent Belgrade lawyer, a war-time saboteur and an affirmed patriot prepared to render "certain" services. Reliable sources say the proceedings against Maksimovic were halted and that he has been for quite some time free.

Penalties for murdering a policeman therefore range from getting acquitted to facing a firing squad. The assassin of Dragan Radisic, however, cannot count on any mitigating circumstances nor on the jury's belief in a self-defence story, provided, of course, the police catch him and bring him to trial (no statements on the investigation have been released by Wednesday, 7 February). The police, quite simply, must solve this case and bring the perpetrator to justice not only to save face, fulfil the vow made at Radisic's grave and live up to its promise to combat crime, but also for the sake of Belgrade's citizens and their future. The murder of a policeman would cause all-round concern and prompt the citizens to help the police even in countries with a bigger crime rate than that in Yugoslavia.

That is only logical, for a police officer represents order without which civilized life is impossible. Regretably, relations between citizens and the police in Belgrade have been distorted to a great extent, largely because of police (mis) conduct. Everyone still remembers the events of March 1991 and June 1993, when civilians attending protest rallies were brutally beaten by police, who - it seemed - couldn't care less whether they were using excessive force on a potential criminal or an elderly actress. It is also no secret that the police have been using too many convicted criminals for what they call "services of national interest", various forms of corruption and some other things. If asked to choose between the most appealing of criminals ("street hero", "samurai of the street", "tough guy", etc..) and the worst policeman, an honourable man will always vote for the law. Not only because that's a citizen's duty, but also because of fear for his own future. Detecting the murderer of inspector Radisic is therefore a good opportunity for the Belgrade police to restore some self-respect and the citizens' confidence.