The Disciplinary Commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) has rejected the appeal of traffic police officer Goran Petrović, the husband of police major Katarina Petrović from Valjevo, who was punished in first-instance disciplinary proceedings conducted before the disciplinary superior in Valjevo by having his rank revoked over a caricature of a police officer posted on his private Facebook profile.
This confirmed the decision made by Mirjana Milovanović, the disciplinary superior who conducted the first-instance proceedings and is a close associate of Valjevo police chiefs Vlada Jerinić and Dragan Dobrisavljević, who have been identified as the commanders responsible for the brutal violence against students and citizens during last year’s protest in Valjevo.
According to sources cited by Nova, the proceedings conducted by Milovanović were based on illegalities, and the decision to punish Petrović was made with serious violations of the rules governing disciplinary proceedings.
The confirmation of such a decision has further fueled suspicions that Goran Petrović was targeted by his superiors because of his wife Katarina, who has been suffering the consequences for more than three years after publishing details of a traffic accident in Dedinje caused by Nikola Petrović, the godfather of the former president of the Republic.
“In this way, the regime has once again targeted a disobedient policewoman who has been facing persecution within the MUP for three years. In addition to being unlawfully arrested and detained, she is now being kept under suspension, which has meant that she has not received her full salary for years. The fact that her husband has now had his rank revoked, which will also affect his income, makes it reasonable to conclude that they are deliberately targeting the couple in an organized effort to threaten their livelihood. Goran Petrović has also received ‘warnings’ that he will be punished by being transferred from Valjevo to another city,” a well-informed source told Nova.
The source recalls that among the witnesses in the proceedings against Petrović were police officers whose names appear in a criminal complaint filed with the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime over violence against students and citizens.
All the irregularities in the proceedings
Petrović posted the caricature that led to the disciplinary proceedings on his private Facebook profile back in November 2024. Like the other content on his profile, the post was visible only to a limited circle of people who follow him.
The drawing depicts a fully equipped police officer with a child running into his arms on the doorstep of his family home, while red boot prints remain behind him.
The caricature was soon taken from his profile and shared in the “PU Valjevo” Viber group, prompting a reaction from his superior, Valjevo Traffic Police Chief Lieutenant Colonel Predrag Radosavljević.
Radosavljević submitted an initiative to launch disciplinary proceedings over suspicions that Petrović had committed a serious breach of official duty, namely that his conduct had damaged the reputation of the MUP.
Dejan Ostojić, the police officer responsible for initiating disciplinary proceedings against Valjevo police officers, then accepted the initiative and launched the proceedings, which were conducted by disciplinary superior Major Mirjana Milovanović.
According to Nova’s source, the proceedings were burdened with legal shortcomings from the very beginning.
“The first unlawful act in the proceedings initiated by Major Milovanović, and the major legal error she made, was that she questioned Chief Radosavljević and Dejan Ostojić as witnesses. She was not allowed to do that because both of them, as the initiators of the proceedings, have the status of parties to the case. This applies particularly to Ostojić, who initiated the proceedings in his official capacity, acting under the authority of Valjevo Police Department Chief Vlada Jerinić,” the source said previously.
Four other police officers were also questioned as witnesses – Milan Cvijić, Zoran Vukosavljević, Ranko Jevtić and Milovan Mirković – whose statements were, according to the source, largely identical.
“They all said they were outraged by Petrović’s ‘story’ and that they felt humiliated and distressed,” the source added.
However, one police officer’s testimony was different.
“Ranko Jevtić initially said that he did not have Facebook at all, but that a colleague had shown him the caricature. He was additionally offended because he recognized himself in the police officer in the drawing ‘because of the bloody footprints,’ since he had ‘spent two wars in uniform.’ Given that the caricature contains no specific identifying features, the person conducting the questioning failed to ask the ‘distressed’ witness whether he felt the same way about all drawings depicting uniformed personnel or only this one, and why this particular drawing affected him,” the source said.
Who actually linked the MUP to the caricature?
Police Major Mirjana Milovanović, who concluded the first-instance proceedings against Petrović and determined that he had committed a serious breach of official duty, imposed the penalty of revoking his rank.
According to Nova’s source, she accepted the claims made by the initiators of the proceedings and the witnesses who were questioned.
“It remains unclear why, and on what basis, Milovanović linked the controversial caricature – that is, the bloody boot prints – to the Serbian police, given that the police officer depicted could have been anyone in the world. Ultimately, it turns out that she was the one who, through this decision, unequivocally attributed the bloody boots to MUP officers, not Petrović, whose only ‘offense’ was posting an ordinary drawing.”
The source adds that the four police officers whose statements underpin the decision are named in a criminal complaint over suspicions that they took part in beating citizens during the violence against them on August 15 last year.
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Source: Nova Foto: Nova Printscreen
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