Patrol Police vs “Smart”

Manon Bokuchava, Kvemo Kartli

Humanrights.ge was informed about conflict between Teleti district patrol police officers and trading center “Smart” in Marneuli. According to our source of information, patrol police officers abuse their power.

According to the provided information, the story started when a patrol police officer asked a shop-assistant of the Smart’s Marneuli branch to warm or roast purchased meat product for him. Initially, the shop-assistant expressed dissatisfaction about the request but finally cooked food. However, she warned the patrol police officer that it would never happen in future because it was not their responsibility to cook food for customers.

Next evening, when Smart’s vehicle was about to take employees home, the patrol police fined the vehicle, where the shop-assistant was sitting. The source of information said that when fining the driver, the patrol police officer said the shop-assistant was guilty in it and warned that he would always fine the car where she will be sitting.

Nobody wants to openly speak about their conflict with patrol police in the Smart’s Marneuli branch.  They said the conflict was resolved and do not want a new article to worsen situation again. However, the shop manager did not deny the incident occurred between their personnel and the patrol police.

“The incident happened about three weeks ago. I was told there was minor argument between our employee and patrol police officer. Initially, the shop-assistant refused police officer to roast food for him but finally she satisfied his request. However, the patrol police complained that food was not properly roasted and it turned into a conflict. I would like to underline that Smart’s personnel is not obliged to cook food for customers. As for fine, as far as I know, the driver was fined with 10 lari. Of course, our administration also interfered in this conflict because we cannot allow anybody to discredit our employee. We talked with them and conflict was resolved. Now, that patrol police officer continues to visit our shop without any problem, greets us and we have no aggression towards him,” said manager of the Smart’s Marneuli branch Leila Stepania.

She did not exactly know whether Smart had paid the fine imposed by the patrol police officer or not.

Head of the MIA’s press-center Nino Giorgobiani told humanrights.ge that ministry will study this particular case and if any violation is observed, the patrol police officer will be held responsible for it.

Humanrights.ge does not have information whether Teleti patrol police officers used fines for personal revenges in the past too. We would like to clarify that initial source of the information about conflict between Smart and patrol police was not provided to us by the Smart’s personnel. We hope this article will not become ground of a new conflict.