WARSAW, Poland — Polish authorities are investigating the recent deaths of two men after alleged mistreatment by police in two separate cases in southwestern Poland.
Four officers have been suspended after a 25-year-old Ukrainian man died in July at a center that takes in people judged to be drunk in public to allow them to sober up, where he had been brought and handled by the police.
Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported Thursday that it has seen July 30 footage from the Wroclaw facility in which police officers and center employees allegedly beat and sat on Dmytry Nikiforenko to stop him wriggling, before he apparently lost consciousness.
He was pronounced dead the same day, and has been buried in Ukraine.
Also Thursday, national police chief, Jaroslaw Szymczyk, appeared before a parliamentary commission about the death of a 34-year-old Pole on Aug. 6 in Wroclaw province, after police allegedly tried to control his aggressive behavior.