Slovakia: Romani politician says if video of police brutality did not exist, authorities would probably have never investigated

Peter Pollák, the former Rapporteur to the Government of the Slovak Republic on the Romani Community, said at a press conference on 25 May that was broadcast through his Facebook page that it is essential that video cameras be made part of police officers’ uniforms in order to assess whether officers have used force without grounds. The Romani politician said that four years after promises by Slovak Police Director Tibor Gašpar and Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák to introduce such video cameras, they are not yet being used.

The politician also warned that if the randomly-filmed video footage of the recent police brutality incident in Zborov had not existed, Gašpar and Kaliňák would have been able to claim the crime never happened. “We just have a random video here, but I believe that we will not be dependent forever on such ramdom accidents to discover the existence of such brutes on the police force,” Pollák said.

The video of the brutal intervention against Romani residents of Zoborov on 16 April 2017 was published online on 24 May by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). Police officers can be seen assaulting small children and pushing to the ground an older woman who was not participating in any conflict.