Czech police officer’s suicide: colleagues allege bullying

The suicide of a police officer named Hana was reported on Tuesday on the social network X by former police officer Richard, who used to work with her in the investigation support unit, where they dealt with cybercrime and the sexual abuse of children. He believes the woman was bullied for years and has filed a complaint with the General Inspectorate of Security Forces (GIBS).

“Gossip was his specialty”

“We talked every day, and more than once I saw her broken and in tears when she came back from the head of department’s office. But she did nothing about it and put up with it,” Richard said. He is asking for an investigation into the situation in the unit and the conduct of one specific department head. The editorial office knows his name but is not publishing it.

According to Richard, this superior was behind not only the bullying of Hana but also the pressure on Richard himself and several other current and former female employees. He describes “long-term, group and escalating bullying”: humiliation at meetings and, after a move to the building in Prague’s Stodůlky, complete isolation from the team. “Gossip was his specialty: he spread rumors that chosen people were sloppy, unreliable, lazy, unsuitable. That is how he quietly pushed people out of the team,” the former officer added. He says that bonuses were cut and performance appraisals lowered for him and his colleagues.

Richard noted that Hana was an experienced officer: among other things, she served in the Organized Crime Unit and, as an expert, took part in an international mission in Kosovo, where mass graves from the war in the former Yugoslavia were exhumed. “She was bullied for many years. I noticed it around 2020. I shake with anger when I read that the police directorate denies everything and claims it had no information. That is a brazen lie,” he said. At the same time, he does not rule out that the woman may have been in poor mental health and took her own life for health reasons, “but I know what I went through myself and, accordingly, Hana did too.”

Made to work while on sick leave

Another former colleague of Hana’s, who also left the directorate a few years ago, spoke on condition of anonymity. He named “amateurish, bossing management and unsuitable working conditions” as the reason for leaving. He described what happened when Hana was seriously ill with a lung condition and on sick leave: “Her direct superior and his department head bombarded her with text messages and emails, and even demanded that she work from home while ill. She also said she was threatened with psychological evaluations and advised to see a police psychologist.”

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz