ÚSTÍ NAD LABEM,

NORTH BOHEMIA

Milan Huňák slowly walks his beat around the hillside paneláks, communist-era prefabricated high-rises, on the edge of the city. The threat of rain has kept many people inside, but the ones that amble by the 36-year-old police officer give him glances of mistrust — maybe because he is a cop, maybe because he is ethnically Romany, or Gypsy, but likely a combination of both.

Indeed, police officers like Huňák are unusual here and around the country. Less than 2 percent of this city's 189 officers are Romany.

The Interior Ministry hopes a new initiative will mean that the sight of a Romany police officer — and officers from other national and ethnic minorities — will not be that strange. The ministry plans to launch a program next month that is aimed at luring such minorities to police forces nationwide.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Jana Matďjusová says the recruitment is not aimed at improving communication between minorities and the police. "It's because the Czech police should represent Czech society, and the minorities should be represented."

The project will amount to an advertising campaign appealing to minorities to consider joining the police force. It will target five cities, including Prague and Ústí, and will cost 1.6 million Kč through 2007.

The country's anti-discrimination law does not allow the Interior Ministry to track how many minority officers it currently employs, and Matďjusová refused to say that minorities are underrepresented in police departments.

The big three

The Interior Ministry will try to bring in officers from all minorities, but officials say they will focus on attracting Roma, Ukrainians and Vietnamese — three of the four largest minority groups.

There are 11,000 people listed as Roma according to census data, but the state estimates there are more than 200,000 ethnic Roma living here as citizens. There are more than 90,000 Ukrainians and 37,000 Vietnamese within the country, according to the Interior Ministry.

Ukrainians and Vietnamese ranked second and third behind Slovaks in the number of crimes committed by foreigners. Together they accounted for 1,053 crimes in 2004, the last year for which data was available. Crimes by Roma are not tracked due to the anti-discrimination law.

Minority groups' opinions about the police initiative vary from healthy skepticism to outright surprise. One Ukrainian nongovernmental organization was completely unaware of the project when The Prague Post asked. But most consider it is a step in the right direction.

"The impact would be positive," says Eva Pechová, chairwoman of Klub Hanoi, a Vietnamese advocacy group. "The Vietnamese would trust the police more than ever."

Viktor Rajčinec, chairman of the Ukrainian Initiative in the Czech Republic, favors the initiative but says the Interior Ministry could have done something much sooner. "They had money for that, but they were asleep and did nothing," he says.

The Interior Ministry devised and approved the initiative in 2003, but Matďjusová says the ministry scheduled it to be implemented only now.

Anna Sedlecká, assistant police director in Ústí nad Labem, admits Roma have shown very little interest in joining the police force, but says that is only a part of the problem.

"It's not that we don't want to employ Roma," she says. "Many of those that are interested lack the qualification, and most fail to fulfill at least one of the requirements."

Most of the Roma that have applied for the force in Ústí nad Labem don't have the proper education or have had past trouble with the law, Sedlecká says.

Ivan Veselý, chairman of the Roma rights organization Dženo, says the initiative is a step forward, but that it does not go far enough because it fails to take into consideration the lack of qualifications.

"That is why I would rather recommend a system of lessons and lectures for possible applicants so that they would be properly prepared for the job," he says.

Historic mistrust

The Interior Ministry will have to overcome longstanding mistrust from members of these groups toward police.

The Prague Post spoke with three Vietnamese vendors at the open-air market beneath the Wilsonova overpass, near the Florenc bus station. All spoke clear English until the subject of police officers arose, at which point they became wary, dropped English, and said in Czech, "I don't understand," before walking away.

Minorities' mistrust of the police is not unreasonable. Two police officers in Brno, south Moravia, are currently facing prosecution for a June 30 incident in which they are accused of beating a Romany man and forcing an unloaded gun into his mouth.

Huňák says he's never felt any racism from other officers and says he's in favor of the initiative even if the Interior Ministry fails to hire a single minority officer as a result.

"It is good, if for nothing else than no one can talk about racism," he says.