‘Have Mercy on the Grandmother’: Police Chief Comments on Incident Between Officer and Citizen

‘How do you assess a situation when the head of state passes under official protocol, police officers are performing their duties, and a driver is using a siren?’ This was stated by the Chief of Police of Armenia, Aram Ohanyan, during a conversation with journalists in the National Assembly on April 9, in response to a question about an incident where the police forcibly removed a driver from their vehicle.

When asked how long the officers could have kept the road blocked, the police chief declined to answer. In response to a journalist's remark that the driver had activated the siren because they were rushing to a grandmother's funeral, the police chief said, ‘Have mercy on the grandmother.’

Aram Ohanyan also noted that the other officer did not hit the citizen who wished to film the incident. ‘Let the departmental inquiry clarify this, I won’t comment on it right now,’ he stated.