The Prague Post Online: Opinion: Pay city police officers what they're worth

November 22nd, 2008

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Pay city police officers what they're worth

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December 26th, 2007 issue

We see police officers out and about all the time in Prague neighborhoods walking the beat. We see them late at night patrolling dark streets. We see them hopping on the metro during rush hour. We see them talking to shopkeepers and helping ambulance drivers.

For all of this community policing we salute them. We think such forward-thinking strategies need support.

Crime in the capital has been going down at the same time including a 2 percent drop in the crime rate in the first six months of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006 according to statistics from the force.

It is the fourth year in a row that crime rates for that time frame have dropped. The most common crimes in the city are car thefts and pick-pocketing rather than violent crimes. There were 23 murders during that period in Prague compared to the shockingly high rate in Detroit the crime capital of the United States which had more than 250 murders in the same six-month period in 2006 according to the most recent crime statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Of course big cities in the United States such as Detroit Baltimore Md. just outside of Washington D.C. New York and Washington itself have larger populations. The United States also has a lot more guns one of the main differences between the United States and Europe when it comes to crime.

We know it often takes more than just neighborhood policing strategies to cause a drop in crime. But having police out walking the beat makes residents feel more secure and in a touristy city like Prague that security means more than any statistics.

So it’s worrisome to find out that the Prague police are now in turmoil — they continue to face mass resignations and retirements with no end in sight (See story page A1). Police officials expect to see an additional 280 officers leave the city’s force by Dec. 31 leading to an expected shortage of 770 employees by the beginning of the year more than 10 percent of the force.

Even though police officials have been recruiting heavily in recent months with a controversial advertising campaign they don’t yet have enough new officers trained to fill those empty slots. Low and dropping unemployment in many regions across the country appears to be contributing to the problem — potential police officers can often make more money in the private sector.

This won’t be solved overnight. But we’d like to suggest giving officers in Prague a pay supplement for the heavier work load and the added stress they have when working in a big city. Police salaries are currently the same across the country with many police academy graduates heading toward jobs in regions outside of the capital where work conditions tend to be easier according to police officials.

In addition to spending the needed money to pay those officers keep on spending money on police training supplementing it with funding from the national budget if necessary.

Finally we agree with Prague Deputy Mayor Rudolf Blažek who wants soccer game security to be paid by event coordinators rather than by taxpayers. Hundreds if not thousands of police get paid to “baby-sit” fans — that’s money that should come out of private pockets.

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