Pârvu v. Romania (Application no. 13326/18)

A selection of key paragraphs can be found below the judgement.

CASE OF PÂRVU v. ROMANIA

84.  Moreover, in the Court’s view, serious issues arise as to the planning and control of the operation. Firstly, it should be noted that Mr Pârvu was fatally injured not in the course of an unplanned operation which gave rise to developments to which the police were called upon to react (compare and contrast Makaratzis, cited above, § 69), but in a planned operation in which significant police forces were deployed, although they acted upon unreliable information that the person driving the Ford Mondeo was the fugitive that they wanted to arrest, not Mr Pârvu. The Court is struck by the insufficiencies of the investigation conducted by the domestic authorities into the issue of the identification error committed by the police with respect to Mr Pârvu (see paragraph 97 below), who was not the person the police were looking for, a significant error which became obvious to the police only immediately after the fatal shooting. […] 

85.  The Court further notes that the subsequent criminal proceedings cast doubt on whether the police officers who took part in the events in question were clearly identifiable as being from the police. In addition, in planning an operation designed to arrest a potentially dangerous suspect and involving a large number of officers, the police failed to arrange for an ambulance to be present (see Wasilewska and Kałucka, cited above, § 55). As a consequence, the victim had to wait for about fifteen minutes for one to arrive (see paragraph 10 above). 

86.  Lastly, the Court observes that the Government have failed to explain whether an adequate legislative and administrative framework had been put in place to safeguard citizens against arbitrariness and abuse of force (see Wasilewska and Kałucka, cited above, § 56). 

87.  Having regard to these circumstances the Court considers that the manner in which the police responded cannot be considered to have been “no more than absolutely necessary” to achieve the aim of preventing Mr Pârvu’s escape and arresting him or averting the perceived threat posed by him. In particular, the operation was not planned so as to reduce to a minimum any recourse to lethal force. 

88.  The foregoing considerations are sufficient to enable the Court to conclude that there has been a violation of Article 2 of the Convention under its substantive limb. 

96. Furthermore, the criminal investigation into Mr Pârvu’s fatal gunshot injury lasted for more than eleven years with the case being sent back to the prosecutor four times because of significant omissions in the investigation.

97. Lastly, the Court cannot overlook the fact that the investigation authorities only superficially addressed the issue of the planning and control of the operation. In particular, they did not provide a reasonable explanation why, in the context of the specially trained forces’ presence at the incident location, in the exercise of a mission to immobilise potentially dangerous persons, D.G.’s intervention was necessary and in accordance with the law, or whether any special measures had been planned in advance in order to ensure the proper identification of the suspect to be arrested, or to cope with the specific situation of a possible uncertainty or error regarding the identification of the suspect. Moreover, the Court notes that more than
six years after the tragic incident, on 26 February 2016, the Brăila County Court established that the police operational procedures were contained in a secret document, to which the prosecutor had not been given access (see paragraph 39 above).

98. Consequently, having regard to the proceedings as a whole, and in particular to the lack of reasonable expedition of the investigation (see paragraph 96 above) and its lack of thoroughness (see paragraph 97 above), it cannot be said that the domestic authorities have properly discharged the procedural obligation under Article 2 of the Convention to conduct an effective investigation into the shooting of Mr Pârvu.

 

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