Karlovy Vary, West Bohemia, June 9 (CTK) – The police in the Karlovy Vary Region have launched new methods to uncover illegal drug producers and dealers and they cooperate with their German colleagues, regional police head Oldrich Tomasek said yesterday.
However, in spite of a number of successful operations, the police still are not satisfied with the results of their efforts in this respect, Tomasek said during Interior Minister Milan Chovanec’s visit to the region.
The police’s new methods include the officers’ infiltration of the community of drug dealers, he said.
For example, a recent crackdown on a drug dealer in Potucky, a town on the border with Saxony, was a success thanks to cooperation between the Czech and German police.
“We succeeded in infiltrating the [criminal] community and arresting the perpetrator after catching him red-handed trying to sell a high amount of a drug,” Tomasek said.
He said a faster solving of drug cases has been prevented by differences in the penal laws of the Czech Republic and Germany. As a result, it takes too long until the cases appear before the court.
Chovanec said the police in the Karlovy Vary Region rank among the most experienced in fighting drug crime.
West Bohemia is an area of a massive illegal production of drugs, most of which are exported to Germany and Austria.
“The problem is that the producers are largely members of the Vietnamese community, which is closed and uneasy to penetrate,” Chovanec said.
He said about six tonnes of illegal drugs are annually produced in the Czech Republic, while the police succeed in uncovering and seizing a mere several hundred kilograms.
A few years ago, the German police reacted to the massive cross-border drug trafficking by starting to stop and thoroughly check Czech drivers in Germany. This met with the drivers’ protests.
Tomasek told CTK yesterday that Czech-German police cooperation now focuses on precise operations that bring the police directly to the drug producers.
