The police are obliged to react promptly to locate the missing minors, identify them and bring them safely home or to the center they left, but the legal tools currently available to the police are not the most appropriate ones to handle such situations, Viorel Cernăuţeanu, the head of the General Police Inspectorate (GPI), said during public consultations held in the Parliament Building. He noted that mobile phone carriers hold any conversation and deciphering, but no employee of state institutions has access to these records and databases. There is a need to adjust the mechanism so that in case of disappearance of persons, especially minors, the police have access to these data.
Viorel Cernăuţean said that when police employees receive a complaint from a family member about the disappearance of a person and there are technical capabilities to locate the phone “on warm trails”, the police are blocked by the lack of appropriate legal instruments. No mobile operator is willing to offer the opportunity to obtain the phone deciphering or phone coverage of the area where the person is so that the police can locate this. “We thus trust more mobile phone operators that hold any conversation, communication and deciphering and do not have access to those records and databases, not even a state institution,” noted the GPI chief.
He also said that the video monitoring system in public spaces also creates impediments to a swift investigation process. Referring to the case of the young woman from Orhei, who was found dead in Telenești district, Viorel Cernăuțeanu said that during the investigation process, the police had limited access to video recordings in Orhei district. A number of low-quality video sequences were offered to the police by the representative of the entity that manages the video system in Orhei. In case of critical situations at night, it is unlikely that people who own or manage video systems will be found. The police should have access to all the recordings from video systems placed in the public space.
“We need to consider we can improve the system and what levers can help all of us to react quickly and identify viable mechanisms to solve such situations,” Viorel Cernăuțeanu stated during the public consultations on the systemic response of the state to exceptionally serious cases of violence and the measures taken to protect women and girls in the Republic of Moldova.
Mariana Gornea, prosecutor of the Prosecutor General’s Office, said that violence against women and girls in Moldova and domestic violence remain a rather serious problem. Despite the actions taken, there are still cases that result in death, like the tragedy with the young woman from Orhei. The Prosecutor’s Office assures that the necessary criminal investigation actions will be carried out in order to investigate in all aspects the circumstances of the case, collect evidence to establish the guilt of the perpetrator, hold this criminally responsible and apply a proportionate punishment for the committed act.
“Based on the results of the ordered judicial expertise, including the forensic one, the accusation will be completed with sexual violence,” said the prosecutor. Also, the act will be investigated for establishing the gender motive, respectively, for formulating another aggravating charge, namely the crime committed for reasons of prejudice or gender. It could be that this case is nothing more than a crime that represents gender-based violence,” said Mariana Gornea.
In 2023, the prosecutors handled 136 criminal cases of rape and subsequently, with the participation of prosecutors, the cases were examined in court with 98 prison sentences pronounced in them.
