A parliamentary commission of the Czech Chamber of Deputies, established to investigate the December 2023 mass shooting at Charles University, issued its final report yesterday. The report contained a number of recommendations, including the more prominent marking of plain-clothes police officers, and improvements to the equipment and gear of the first responders.
“In the future, it would be advisable for plain-clothes police officers to be more distinctly marked. In a psychologically challenging situation, anyone in the danger zone can be mistakenly assessed as the perpetrator,” the commission wrote, adding that the blue armband can easily be overlooked in crisis situations.
The commission also recommended that the police analyse the system of information transfer and improve communication with people outside the police force. It proposed changes to gun legislation and an increase in some police powers. The Interior Ministry should also launch an information campaign for the public on how to behave in crisis situations, the commission recommended.
In the report, MPs said some police departments do not have enough submachine guns, and not all patrols are equipped with them. “Yet these are essential equipment for effective action against an active shooter in a ballistic situation,” the commission pointed out.
Police patrols should be equipped with medical backpacks and crowbars, the report said. THe police force should also analyse and improve information sharing or procedures for locating mobile phones.
The commission proposes to ban silencers for short-barrel guns, refine the registration of guns in the register, and improve the authorisation of gun inspectors.
Telephone companies should be obliged to provide police officers with mobile phone location data free of charge. Police officers should have access to the portraits of people registered with state institutions and private individuals. General practitioners should have access to uniformly linked medical records, the commission recommended.
The Interior Ministry is already implementing a large part of the recommendations presented in the lower house commission’s final report, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan (STAN) told journalists today. He cited work on firearm legislation and the better arming of police officers as examples.
The report also made several recommendations to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. To prevent situations similar to the tragic shooting, it says the number of child psychologists and clinical psychiatrists must be increased. The availability of crisis lines providing psychological help and support should also be improved.
The Ministry of Education should improve training for teachers in helping children with traumatic experiences and solving problems in the classroom. It should also run anti-bullying and cyberbullying prevention programmes.
Commission member Karel Haas (ODS), who presented the recommendations to the lower house session today, pointed out that all the members of the commission agreed on these recommendations.
The report says that the commission found no faults in the actions of the integrated rescue services during the shooting that would have affected the factual history of the events, but it states that there were deficiencies in operational and tactical management before the shooting.
The shooter, a 24-year-old faculty student, killed 13 people in the main building of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in central Prague on 21 December 2023. Another 25 people were injured by the shooter, who committed suicide. One of the victims died in hospital.