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Off the beat

As more city officers leave the force, police reforms get under way

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
December 19th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
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At the end of the year, Prague police will have to cope with what officials are calling an unprecedented predicament: Amid mass resignations, an additional 280 officers are slated to depart by Dec. 31, leaving the local police force short of 770 employees.

With a staffing void that accounts for eleven percent of the force, Prague police representatives met Dec. 11 with high-level officials from City Hall and a Police Presidium for day-long discussions on how to resolve the problem.
“770 is an enormous mass of people that will be sorely missed,” says Prague Police Director Petr Želásko. “Their absence will be felt on all levels.”
According to Želásko, the current exodus is partly caused by a glut of police officers who have reached retirement. “We’re undergoing a sort of generational exchange,” he says. As veteran officers leave the service, officials are struggling to find new employees to fill their positions due to the demanding nature of the job of a city police officer, he adds.
With salaries that do not reflect the higher costs of city living and a more stressful work environment, Police Academy graduates naturally gravitate towards jobs in regions outside of Prague, where the work conditions tend to be easier.
“As a policeman, I myself would pick a different part of the Czech Republic than Prague,” says Deputy Police President Ivan Bílek. “The work load is heavier [in the city], but the pay is the same, so why shouldn’t I?”
Raising Prague police officers’ salaries could help solve the problem. “It’s a question of assessing Prague police differently than police in other parts of the country,” Bílek says. Even with higher wages, however, the Prague police force would still be affected by a dearth of local employees. Because overall job opportunities in the city are plentiful and incentives to work for Prague police are low, most Praguers opt for other career fields, the daily Mladá fronta Dnes reported Dec. 12.
In terms of the Prague Municipal Police force, about 65 percent of Prague police officers hail from other parts of the country, lured by large-scale recruiting projects such as Akce Praha, Prague Municipal Police spokeswoman Radka Waitová told The Prague Post Aug. 22.
Yet even police officers from regions with high unemployment rates, such as North Moravia, typically serve in Prague for relatively short terms. After completing a mandatory trial period, most of them apply for reassignment in their home region, Želásko says.
To allay the city’s ailing police force, officials are taking steps to free police officers of unnecessary responsibilities that prevent them from patrolling the streets. Because of a highly bureaucratic system that requires police officers to file extensive reports for each incident, “most policemen spend their day dealing with piles of paperwork,” Želásko says.
Increasing police officers’ access to modern technology and relegating their responsibility for filing car accident reports to insurance companies could decrease this administrative burden, adds Prague Deputy Mayor Rudolf Blažek.
In addition, Blažek wants to lower police presence at soccer games, where hundreds of police officers are sent to “baby-sit” fans, he says. “Maintaining order inside the stadiums is the responsibility of the event coordinator, not the city,” he adds. “These hundreds and thousands of policemen should be working on the streets—not protecting one group of football fans from another.”
Reformist roadshow
The Dec. 11 Prague discussion was the last in a month-long series of consultations in which Bílek toured the country with the Police Presidium, meeting representatives from regional authorities. The purpose of these talks was to inform local citizens and officials of the planned police reforms that Interior Minister Ivan Langer wants to start implementing next year.
Saddled with a nationwide deficit of approximately 5,000 police officers, Langer seeks to rehabilitate the force by de-bureaucratizing police work and granting greater autonomy to individual precincts.
By consulting about the reforms with regional police heads, Bílek and his colleagues sought to assess the implementation of the planned changes on a local level.
“There were many topics to discuss and we were pressed by time, but we think it was a successful first step in launching a nationwide debate [about the reforms],” says police presidium spokesman Roman Skřepek.
Despite its own diminishing force, Blažek says Prague was the “golden prize” at the end of this Police Presidium “roadshow.”
Unlike other regions, where criminality is on an upswing, the Prague crime rate is down by 2 percent since last year, Blažek says. “The drop is in line with a trend that started two years ago,” he adds. “Naturally, police have the biggest hand in it.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


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