site.btaUPDATED Interior Minister Heard in Parliament on Recent Case of Assault by Police Officer, CC-DB Demands Minister's Resignation
An officer of the Fourth Regional Police Department in Burgas, who was arrested for assault at Kite Bar, on the Camping Gradina area, on July 1, shortly after 2.40 a.m., has been suspended from duty, said the caretaker Minister of Interior Kalin Stoyanov during a hearing in Parliament on Thursday. Stoyanov was confident that the officer will be fired.
When the incident was reported on July 1, two units dispatched to the scene identified two victims and two eyewitnesses.
The detainee, 21-year-old Hristo Petrov, has been working at the Interior Ministry since October 25, 2023. Petrov is currently on probation. He is a patrol police officer, Interior Ministry Secretary General Dimitar Kangaldzhiev said on Wednesday. Before he started working as a police officer, Petrov worked as a security guard. It is yet to be investigated whether he was still working as such at the time of the incident.
Before each season, an analysis is conducted to establish what forces the Ministry of Interior will have to provide for security. Stoyanov said that more than 400 people from the country have been deployed along the Black Sea coast this year, in addition to police officers from other countries.
Yavor Bozhankov MP of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) told reporters in Parliament that CC-DB demands Stoyanov's resignation, as he is failing to tackle the Interior Ministry's problems. Bozhankov reported that CC-DB will notify President Rumen Radev of their motives to demand Stoyanov's resignation.
Bozhankov added: "Stoyanov could not answer why the perpetrators of the crime were not apprehended at the scene. He could not give a meaningful answer as to what measures he would take, because it is obvious that personnel selection suffers from systematic flaws."
The CC-DB MP referred to the fact that Petrov was wearing a Delta Guard uniform at the time of the assault, saying that the security company has fused with structures of the Interior Ministry.
Stela Nikolova MP of CC-DB said: "This security company should be audited, because its staff numbers are not high enough to cover the contracts it concludes for the security of sites, especially on the southern Black Sea coast." Nikolova said it was very likely that police officers working on the southern Black Sea coast would work for Delta Guard in their off hours.
Camping Gradina wrote in a statement sent to the media on Thursday that the assault did not take place on their territory. The statement specifies that Camping Gradina is located in the northernmost part of the Gradina area, far from Kite Bar where the incident actually happened.
/YV/
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