Danish cops have no business in Prague, says DF

Not the job of Danish police to follow drunken teens on their winter holiday

Feb 13, 2014

Danish police officers should not be in the Czech Republic policing the antics of under-aged Danish drinkers as they fill up on cheap beer. According to Peter Skaarup, a spokesperson for the right wing Dansk Folkeparti, it is a waste of resources.

"I would like to hear from the police if they believe that we have enough officers in Denmark to send them off on this sort of detail," Skaarup told DR Nyheder.

Cops are often deployed outside the country for things like major football matches featuring the national side, but Skaarup thinks the Prague trip is not the same.

"It is a question of limits," he said. "Should we also send Danish officers to Thailand and Bulgaria this summer when many young people head there for a holiday?"

During last year’s winter holiday, dozens of Danish youngsters were admitted to local hospitals suffering from alcohol poisoning, stabbings and other injuries, while six others were arrested for violence. Hotels and bars were also vandalised.

The right choice
"I think it makes perfect sense to send the officers to Prague," Konservative spokesperson Tom Behnke told DR Nyheder. "We have thousands of young Danes drinking beer in Prague this week who do not normally drink beer at home."

The four officers on the detail come from four different precincts. The Danish police union is not happy about the assignment.

"We have not been part of this decision and question whether it is a job for the Danish police," Claus Oxfeldt, the head of the union, told DR Nyheder. "When Swedish and Norwegian kids come here and act crazy, we handle it."

Government spokesperson Jeppe Mikkelsen said last year's debauchery made deploying Danish cops a necessity. "I wish that it was unnecessary," Mikkelsen told DR Nyheder. "The way things went last year, it just makes sense.

Czech mate
Meanwhile, Czech police have cracked down hard on the Danish drinking mayhem in Prague, detaining scores of youths under the age of 18 and escorting them to their hotels.

Twenty-seven underage Danes were withheld by the police and escorted back to their hotels after they were caught in discos, bars and on the streets with alcohol in their blood.

“In the Czech Republic you are not allowed to drink alcohol if you are under 18,” a Czech policeman told DR Nyheder. “Their tour operators should have informed them of that.”

The Danish Embassy in the Czech Republic, which has received numerous complaints and pleas from Czech citizens to put a lid on the boisterous Danes, confirmed that the Czech law did not permit under-18 drinking, but that the youths could not be punished because they are minors.

Conversely, the young boozers are upset with the way they have been treated by the Czech police. They feel cheated by their tour operators who they claim did not inform them that they would be kicked out of nightclubs if they had consumed alcohol before trying to enter.

“We haven’t been told anything about it and we’ve paid lots of money for bracelets to gain access to these places,” one of the youths, whose friends had been detained by the police, told DR Nyheder. “We feel cheated. It’s pretty poor marketing.”

The Danish Embassy in the Czech Republic estimated that as many as 6,500 young Danes will be in Prague over the next two weeks.