Czech town says video of Roma police assistants can't be released

Last week the Litvínov town hall did not respond to news server romea.cz’s efforts to contact the leadership for comment regarding the ongoing Roma police assistant case, so the editors sent their questions to Mayor of Litvínov Daniel Volák (ODS) in writing. In the interim, the ODS party lost the municipal elections there. Newly-elected mayor Milan Šťovíček then instructed former Vice-Mayor Martin Klika, who is now the Municipal Police Chief, to respond to us. The response was sent to us by Eva Maříková, the press spokesperson for the town of Litvínov. Our original letter and the town’s response are printed in full below:

Letter to the Mayor of Litvínov:

Your Honor, between Monday 8 November and today, 11 November, we have called the Litvínov town hall 11 times for comment on your statement that three Roma police assistants working at the Janov housing estate are to be fired. We spoke repeatedly with your secretary, Ms Zemanová. For reasons unknown to us, your press spokesperson Ms Maříková never answered her telephone and never called us back. We are writing to ask you to answer the following questions in your capacity as a public official:

1. In an interview for TV Nova, you said the assistants who are to be fired had broken the law. Since the police investigation is still ongoing and nothing has been proven, why are you not respecting the presumption of innocence?

2. Video footage exists of the incident with the man wearing the Workers’ Party cap. Will you release it?

3. Besides the incident under investigation, how have the three assistants performed so far?

Response from the Litvínov town hall:

Mayor Milan Šťovíček has instructed former Vice-Mayor and current Litvínov Police Chief Martin Klika to answer your questions. Mayor Milan Šťovíček assumed office on Thursday 11 November 2010.

1. The police assistants have not been let go, but merely transferred to another site as part of the Úsvit (“Daybreak”) project. They broke the law during their work as part of that project. The incident might be qualified as either a felony or a misdemeanor violation. We respect the presumption of innocence and have not yet taken any measures with respect to their terms of employment.

2. The video footage may only be used as evidence for the needs of the Litvínov Municipal Police and the Police of the Czech Republic. It can only be released on the basis of a written request from a municipal misdemeanor commission, the Police of the Czech Republic, the state attorney or a court. We will not be releasing it to the public therefore.

3. Since the three assistants were transferred elsewhere they have all taken sick leave. I do not know whether this is intentional or not on their part. I do not want to give an evaluation of their work on the Úsvit project because in my opinion the project itself is not appropriate for the locality of Janov.

The “clash” according to the available information

Last week the leadership of the Litvínov town hall expressed its dissatisfaction with the work of three Roma civilians employed as police assistants by the municipal police as part of the Czech Interior Ministry’s Úsvit project. In a press release issued by the town council, then-Vice Mayor Martin Klika said the three Roma individuals had broken the law but gave no details of their alleged crime. He also announced that the town of Litvínov would be letting them go. He later reversed that statement.

The course of the “clash” in question was described to the editors of news server Romea.cz by one of the police assistants, Miroslav Kováč. The illegal behavior in question is said to be the fact that the assistants removed a cap from a man’s head because it included the insignia of the banned neo-Nazi Workers’ Party. The police assistants reject the allegation that they did so illegally.

Kováč says the assistants stopped the man on the street because of his cap and asked him to wait for police to arrive. According to Kováč, the man refused to communicate with them except to say that “Gypsies” were not going to bother him on his way home from work. The assistants then are said to have warned him that promoting the Workers’ Party was a crime and asked him to wait for a police patrol to arrive. One of the police assistants showed the man his service badge and all of them were properly dressed in their service vests. However, the man is said to have refused to communicate with them and started to leave. As he was leaving, one of the assistants removed the cap from his head. Kováč says there was no conflict or struggle. The assistants now all face being fired before their contracts expire.

“We fulfilled the terms of our contract within the limits of the law. We did exactly what our contract requires. We were preventing a future conflict from occurring. Someone might have attacked him because of that cap. We are to blame for what happened, but if something had happened to him, it would also have been our fault. Everything can be seen on the video footage,” says Miroslav Kováč.

Town hall representatives previously said they had not been convinced from the start that only Roma police assistants should be employed at Janov because the housing estate has a mixed population. Town hall spokesperson Eva Maříková also indirectly confirmed the leadership’s intention to get rid of the police assistant positions come what may when she said, “Even if they are never charged, their contracts expire in five and a half weeks.“

Tomorrow, after investigators have deposed the police assistants, we will report their opinions as to how the case is developing.