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Czech patrolman said to have been disciplined after calling Romani children "brats" and threatening to assault their mother

27 January 2022
3 minute read

A video has recently gone viral on Czech social media showing a municipal patrol officer in Mladá Boleslav engaging in a sharp debate with a family of Romani people during which he refers to the children as “brats” and threatens a woman with physical violence. More than one reader of Romea.cz sent the video to the news server and as of 25 January it was still available on TikTok. 

The Deputy Director of the Mladá Boleslav Municipal Police says the video was made last summer. He also said the entire incident ended with both parties apologizing and that the patrol officer has been disciplined.

When the video begins, the woman is emotionally explaining to the policeman that her children are not “brats”. He gets into his car and addresses this threat to her:  “Stop pissing me off or I’ll really let you have it.”

All of this is being filmed by a man who is doing his best to calm the woman while noting the service numbers of the two patrol officers present. Just one of the policemen was aggressive.

“The minute you all see black children you just keel over,” the woman yells at the aggressive officer. “What are you babbling about keeling over… you…,” reacts the policeman and the debate escalates from there.

The other officer and the man filming the incident both do their best to calm the situation. “I’m going to show Mr Kypta [the Municipal Police director] this behavior of yours tomorrow,” the filmmaker’s voice can be heard saying in the video footage.

“Go ahead and show him, you’ll have to go to Croatia where he’s lounging around on a yacht,” the patrol officer responds. “I believe you’re drunk,” the filmmaker responds to those unflattering words about the police director.

The officer then angrily gets back out of the car and uses his radio to call the state police for backup, threatening the Romani family with criminal charges. “Send the state police here, Mr Rom has accused me of being drunk,” the patrolman says into the radio. 

After another brief exchange of opinions during which the officer again repeats that the children are “brats”, the video ends. Romea.cz has attempted to contact the Facebook user who uploaded the footage to the Internet, but has not yet reached whoever it was.

Given that nobody in the video is wearing a facemask and the children are just wearing shorts, it is clear the footage is not recent, but was filmed during warmer weather when pandemic restrictions were relaxed. “The footage is from the summer months of 2021. We know video of our patrolman is circulating online, but that’s quite a shortened version. There is a fuller, unedited version capturing the entire situation from beginning to end. The full video captures how the incident started and the conclusion shows both sides shaking hands and apologizing to each other, admitting that both sides had behaved inappropriately,” Deputy Director of the Municipal Police Stanislav Holub told Romea.cz. 

“The behavior of the patrolman, understandably, was incompatible with the mission of a patrolman and that behavior was disciplined by the director of the Municipal Police internally,” Holub said. News server Romea.cz has been informed that the entire incident happened after the patrolmen began addressing the Romani children for playing with a shopping cart they had allegedly found next to some garbage bins. 

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