Third officer caught for blackmail in one week
In the third case of police extortion in less than a week, a 31-year-old officer from the Kaminia precinct in Piraeus was arrested on Friday.
The policeman allegedly demanded payment of 200 euros from a Pakistani store owner in exchange for turning a blind eye to sanitation violations. The 31-year-old was arrested at the shop the next day when he went to collect the money.
In a related development, the commander of the Rendi precinct in western Athens faced a prosecutor on Friday on charges of robbing a 34-year-old Pakistani man who had been brought into the police station earlier in the week on a traffic violation. The 51-year-old commander allegedly demanded 2,000 of the 4,000 euros found on the Pakistani man during a search. The officer allegedly said that he would not investigate where the money had come from if he was given half of it.
Internal affairs investigators looking into the Pakistani man’s allegations later found 1,945 euros in the commander’s desk. The 51-year-old was suspended from duty and will be the subject of an internal investigation.
Meanwhile in Volos, central Greece, a 33-year-old policeman was charged with kidnapping a 23-year-old with whom he allegedly had a personal rivalry, driving him to a remote location, forcing him to undress, beating him and then abandoning him.
