If an aggressive young man provokes them by ringing the office bell, the policeman cannot punch him in the chest until he falls down, then step on him like a trophy hunter and punch him a few more times in front of his colleagues.
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This was done during interventions at anti-state demonstrations in the eighties. Members of the regime’s opponents soaped the kidneys with batons and kicked, so the learned knew that it was best to wear a kidney belt under the jacket. They also chased rock music lovers who went to the record exchange. Sometimes they used tear gas against them or drove cars into them just because they wanted to listen to different music considered ideologically objectionable.
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And sometimes it was caught by innocent people, even from the point of view of the regime, like a young man who didn’t realize it was August 21 and went up to Műstka and wanted to eat at the Koruna buffet. They broke his metacarpals.
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Also, the attack on the opponent of Andrej Babiš in Český Krumlov from the meeting of the ex-prime minister, who still does not know if he will seek the presidential seat, is strikingly reminiscent of the eighties. At the event, she jostled with a man who turned out to be a plainclothes police officer, and was then taken to an unmarked car.
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In the 1980s, there were often plainclothes officers among the demonstrators, who not only found out who was participating in the event, but often acted as agent provocateurs. And the demonstrators, with whom the authorities did not want to waste time, were also loaded into an unmarked vehicle, usually a bus, and taken outside the city at night, from Prague to Pečka, for example, so that they could get home as best they could.
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In Krumlov, fortunately, the lady was only taken to the office and then released, but we cannot forget that the search and demonstration was a usual tactic of Public Security. And there is still the question of how it could happen that a plainclothes policeman got into an argument with her. Was it necessary for him to engage?
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The presence of the police is not surprising, political meetings are naturally full of emotions, especially at a time when inflation has broken loose, there is a risk of conflicts, but the police have to act very sensitively in such cases so as not to be considered someone’s threshers.
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Their intervention must not only be highly professional and moderate, but they must also be able to consider when intervention is necessary, because the politician simply must be able to handle being booed and booed. This cannot lead to intervention, just as one cannot intervene against someone who loudly plays the Prayer for Martha during a meeting, which has already been confirmed by the court.
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If the situation does not change, it will deepen the divisions in society. Interventions like the one in Krumlov will lead to the police being perceived as bodyguards for the elite, whether government or opposition.
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And that thresher from Počernice, who would stand out well in the ranks of the SNB emergency regiment, is again a clear example of why the Black Lives Matter movement was created in the USA – the police could not control their emotions when they intervened against a certain group of people, among whom there were more people breaking the law . We witnessed exactly that in our country.
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It is enough to remember the brutal intervention against Czechtek in 2005, where the police beat up “fetches” as they looked at unread techno devotees. And we cannot forget how it turned out – mass demonstrations followed, and this event, as from the time of communism, ultimately contributed to the electoral failure of Paroubka’s ČSSD. And it wasn’t even a crisis.
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The forces must always act in moderation and now doubly so, which is in the interest of both the government and the opposition, because the frustration of the population will inevitably grow and may result in an eruption.
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