Czech Police hiring 1 000 police officers for basic services, cybercrime and extremism

The Police of the Czech Republic will be hiring 1 000 more officers now that the increased number of positions on the force was approved by the Government Thursday. A total of 628 police will be hired for basic services, bolstering street patrols and border protection. 

Cybercrime is dealt with by roughly 300 officers in the entire country. At the National Headquarters against Organized Crime there are 175 budgeted positions for cybercrime experts.

The Czech Police are counting on increasing that number by 50 % in the future. While crime in the Czech Republic fell last year by 7.3 % to roughly 202 000 criminal acts, in cybercrime - offenses committed in association with computers and the Internet - the numbers of such incidents are increasing.

Last year, according to Czech Television, the number of cybercrimes investigated grew from 5 344 in 2016 to 5 654 in 2017. Supreme State Prosecutor Pavel Zeman recently said the number of experts in cybersecurity could grow significantly.

In his opinion, 500 experts would be the minimum needed. The problem, however, is that the state offers computer experts salaries that are exponentially lower than those offered by private firms.

According to Interpol statistics from 2016, the numbers of police in European countries differ, but generally it is the case that there are significantly fewer police officers in the north of the continent than in the south. In the Central European area, Slovakia, with a population of five million, is an exceptional case, where according to the Slovak Interior Ministry there are approximately 22 000 police officers, or roughly 440 per 100 000 inhabitants.

The Slovak media have previously reported that Slovakia is one of the European countries with the highest number of police officers per capita. Former Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák, however, cast doubt on that comparison, explaining that in some countries the members of some of the public safety forces that exist are not technically counted as police, which makes their per capita numbers seem lower by comparison. 

Germany has the biggest police corps in Central Europe in terms of absolute numbers. In the country of approximately 83 million there were roughly 275 000 officers at the end of last year, both working for the Federal Police and in each German state.

However, Germany is below average in the region when it comes to per capita numbers, with just approximately 300 officers of the law per 100 000 inhabitants in 2016. In Austria, according to data from 2016, there were 325 police per 100 000 inhabitants, which means roughly 28 000 law enforcement officers total.

A similar police force in per capita terms works in France. In northern Europe, on the other hand, police forces are smaller.

In Denmark there are 236 officers per 100 000 inhabitants, in Finland 200, and in Sweden just 194. Of the Central European countries, Poland approximates that trend, with 260 law enforcement officers per 100 000 inhabitants.