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Police violence

What is police violence

Police violence is a breach of the right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. Police officers may never use unjustifiable excessive physical or psychological force.

The police has a duty to uphold public peace and safety for all of us. In the course of their duties, police officers may not act beyond limits of their lawful authority. They may never use unjustifiable excessive physical or psychological force.

Our work

In our work, we have been devoted for years to eliminate police violence, and we seek to achieve that all aggrieved persons may claim justice. For many years, our main attention has been focused on police violence/ with racial motives, which in our country mostly affects the Roma minority.

In this field:

  • we conduct monitoring and research;
  • we provide legal advice, free of charge;
  • we provide, in specific cases, legal representation free of charge in court proceedings and other legal procedures with regard to their boarder social impact, so-called ‘strategic litigation’;
  • we carry out educational and publishing activities;
  • we advocate for systemic changes on political level;
  • we provide information to international human rights organizations about cases of police violence in Slovakia.

PROTECTION FROM POLICE VIOLENCE

You can defend yourself from police violence by:

HOW WE CAN SUPPORT YOU

In case you believe you suffered from police violence, please contact us.

At the Center for Civil and Human Rights, we:

  • provide legal advice, free of charge – we evaluate, whether you have been a victim of unjustifiable use of excessive physical or psychological force by the Police by breaching the right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, and we suggest legal remedies;
  • provide, in specific cases, legal representation, free of charge, in a criminal proceeding.

OUR ACHIEVEMENTS

  • we provided legal representation, free of charge, to aggrieved individuals in criminal court proceedings largely covered by media in the case of torture of Roma boys from the suburb Luník IX at the Police station in Košice in 2009;
  • we provided legal representation, free of charge, to aggrieved individuals in criminal proceedings also largely covered by the media in the cases of police raids in Moldava nad Bodvou (2013) and in Vrbnica (2015);
  • we provided legal representation to dozens of individuals who claimed to be the victims of police violence; and to many others, we provided legal advice;
  • after exhausting all available domestic legal remedies, we filed on behalf of agreeved individuals a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg;
  • we published an analysis, which describes the main principles of a investigation in case of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, pointed out shortcomings in this field in Slovakia and suggested necessary changes;
  • we published a critical opinion (in Slovak only), in which, based on our experience in practice, we described functional failings in a function of an inspection of the Ministry of Interior, in charge of the investigation in cases of police violence;
  • we provided information to international institutions of the UN or the Council of Europe concerning the limits in the field of protection from the Police violence.

This website is realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic within the subsidy program to promote, support and protect human rights and freedoms and to prevent all forms of discrimination, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and other expressions of intolerance. For the content of this document is solely responsible the Center for Civil and Human Rights.