Police officers in Liberec trained to attack the shooter, professors acted as extras

After the tragedy at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, the police are in close contact with domestic universities. Specifically, in Liberec, university employees were already trained on the topic of security during an emergency situation, and police officers from the so-called first-line patrols, who would intervene in such an emergency situation, also visited all university buildings.

“We are now actively training to deal with a dangerous offender who entered the building with a weapon and with the aim of injuring or killing as many people as possible. Thanks to this, we verify in practice the techniques, tactics and methods we train. We see how they can function in a real environment that is unfamiliar to police officers,” explained Josef Havelka on behalf of the Liberec police officers.

At the University of Ústí, the police practiced intervention during an armed attack

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According to him, movement in the building after arriving at the scene was already intuitive for the police officers and, in principle, very fast. “The biggest time delay is usually from the beginning of the situation to the call to the emergency line, then the cycle starts and it’s quite fast,” said the police officer.

Photo: Michael Polák, Novinky

University pedagogues played the extras during the Liberec exercise.

The rector’s holiday was on Friday at the University of Liberec, so fifty-five university pedagogues had to act as extras experiencing the drama inside the university building. “If, God forbid, there should be an attack in our country, they will have an idea of how to behave or how it is going,” Radek Pirkl, spokesman for the University of Liberec, said to the professors.

The university has already implemented some measures on the recommendation of the police. In classrooms in older buildings, for example, he places lockers with a key to each classroom so that people inside can lock themselves if necessary.