Czech town uses EU funds for police assistant to restrain unruly pupils in the schools

News server iDNES.cz reports that in the Czech town of Sokolov a new reinforcement to the municipal police has begun addressing truancy with troubled families and will even be sitting as an observer next week in classrooms where instruction is disrupted by undisciplined pupils. The police assistant mission is being started at the Primary School on Křižíkova Street, where most of the children (approximately 40) from a recently closed, so-called Romani primary school were reassigned a year and half ago.     

"She comes from a Romani family background herself. She’ll see how the children are behaving during classes. We’re hoping she will speak with the parents, help us smooth out rough edges, and stop truancy," believes Jan Picka, the Sokolov town councilor entrusted with managing the local police. 

School director Vladimír Vlček agreed to the police offer because he knows it is sometimes hard to come to an agreement with some parents. Some families keep their children at home and then send dubious excuses for their absences to their teachers. 

"The assistant could visit the families and pressure them to send their children to school," Vlček said. The local police have employed six Romani assistants since last month instead of the original four.  

In "livelier" streets inhabited by large Romani communities, the police assistants, who are on foot and unarmed, have worked so well that police have now put a new assistant, Anna Červeňáková, in charge of the schools. A schedule is being put together for the police assistants so they can follow children’s behavior during instruction. 

"She will find out which child is doing what, she might visit the parents and discuss everything with them. They will take advice from a Romani assistant more than from teachers. The parents believe we are biased against their children and immediately take any comments as an attack," explained school director Vlček, who emphasized that of the 40 children who transferred to his school after the other one was closed, only three or four are really troubled.

Sokolov is one of 20 selected towns where assistants will be paid for the next 15 months by the European Union from various subsidies. Not only the new hires, but also those who have been serving longer had to reapply for their jobs once more.

The assistants mainly oversee homeless people and troubled parts of town. The police commander deploys them as foot patrols at the town’s largest housing estate, Michal, to hospitals, and to supervise crosswalks near schools.

The assistant who is in charge of the schools is a high school graduate. All of the assistants should have clean criminal records if possible, but if someone has committed a less serious crime in the distant past, that is tolerated; one of the current assistants in Sokolov has a record for credit fraud.

"They are all Romani and belong to the biggest Romani families in Sokolov. I am satisfied with them. When, for example, there was a big brawl going down at a business, both the municipal and state police were called there. When the assistant arrived, he just shouted at the actors in the conflict and there was calm," recalls Petr Kubis, commander of the Sokolov municipal police.  

Kubis considers speaking with Romani people and knowing what they are doing to be the only chance for maintaining the peace without difficulties. He believes it is calm in the town now, apart from some small groups who bother passers-by on the streets by shouting at them, mainly in summer. 

Sokolov is serving as an example for other town halls across the Czech Republic. Once Kubis gets the opportunity to increase police numbers again, he would like to see someone from the Vietnamese community in uniform; Sokolov police also employ 13 Romani people in cleaning squads and are planning to recruit more people from the Labor Office. 

The case of Patrik Bandy, who began as a crime prevention assistant in Sokolov, is a famous one. Kubis eventually invited him to join the force as a regular officer. 

Bandy knows many people in the community on a first-name basis and has their respect; he also has high school and three and a half years of distance study at a professional college behind him. "They themselves say the police don’t want to cause us any difficulties and are here to assist us. I haven’t encountered a time when they wouldn’t let me in. It’s harder-going with some of the open-mouthed youngsters, though, sometimes I have to be more brusque with them," Bandy revealed.