Petr Torák Life in UK
After that first night, immigration officials picked us up
and took us to an asylum detention facility.
And there, for the first time in our lives, we saw people
of different colours and different cultures and religions.
For the first time we saw people in burqas or black people.
It was really a huge culture shock for us.
From the very first moment it was a huge culture shock.
We stayed in that center for, I think, two or three days.
And we were very happy, because you really didn't have any intimacy there.
There were hundreds of asylum seekers.
No one understood anyone properly.
Of course, we were afraid to go anywhere alone in that center.
So we were glad when they took us away afterwards.
We didn't know where they were taking us.
But we traveled for an awfully long time, about two hours.
And suddenly we came to a city where we could see the sea.
And it was practically the first time for me.
I was by the sea in Germany when I was four or five years old.
So I didn't remember much.
But suddenly we were there and there were beaches and the sea around.
We didn´t know what was going on.
Of course, for a while we wondered if they would take us to Dover,
from where they would then ship us back to Europe, home.
But then we went along the beach.
And on the right side up there was a huge complex.
A huge house, or a large building.
And our driver said to us: "Your house."
And he tried to tell us that we were going to live there.
We thought he was joking.
But then he really turned towards it and on that house
on that hotel, now I know it was a hotel, it was written Palace Hotel.
We thought that they must be joking, we will live in the Palace.
And it really looked like that, it was a pure white, huge building.
Directly with views of the beaches and the entertainment center.
So we said to each other what it is, what it means and we went there.
And they actually turned the hotel into an emigration center for asylum seekers.
So there were mostly people from Europe.
There were Roma from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
And then a few asylum seekers from other continents, Africa or Asia.
So they accommodated us there.
I had my own room for the first time in my life.
Because I was already an adult, they gave me my own room, with a direct view of the sea.
So one really lived as...
We couldn't even believe it.
And then an interpreter was waiting for us there, who explained to us
that we will live there for some time before they give us a state house.
So we lived there for about two months.
I remember the moment they dropped us off
and we put our things in our rooms, we went out to eat.
Or we wanted to go out to eat.
But the person had a huge problem how to function anyway.
Also the basic things, when a person would go to the store, buy bread, cut it, the butter.
There was nothing like that.
We searched for maybe two hours for normal Czech bread, a loaf.
And there were those soft, polystyrene-like cubes everywhere.
So it was another culture shock for us, what not to eat.
So we ended up somewhere in KFC
where we had some normal food.
But it took us several, I would say maybe even weeks,
before we got the hang of what a person can eat.
At the same time, there was another aspect of the culture shock.
And that was the relationship between the people there.
I remember that when I was walking in the park in the morning
for example, English people greeted me by themselves.
And even a banal thing like this was a huge thing for me.
It shocked me immediately, because it never happened to me in the Czech Republic
when I went to school, from school, or anywhere, for example,
that non-Roma would greet me like that.
Most of the time, unless there was no interaction.
Or there was the fact that the person preferred to walk
a little further in that park, or to the other side.
But here these people greeted me with a smile, so it was a huge shock to me.
We couldn't work because we didn't have a work permit
during the first year when a person applies for asylum.
So we received some kind of vouchers from the social system,
which we could then exchange for food and other necessary things in the store.
And we received them every week.
I got mine, my parents got it for themselves and for my siblings.
During that time, because we didn't want to be idle,
of course we wanted to function in some way,
so once when we were with our immigration lawyer,
who we had right there a short distance from the hotel,
dad had an idea that I wasn't very excited about at the time.
But he asked the lawyer if she would like me to help there for free.
And of course I was completely shocked, I didn't have a self-confidence at that time.
I didn't really know English yet, so I protested.
But, of course, now I know how very progressive that idea was.
Because the lady immediately agreed to it, she was very happy.
And in three months, by going there every day,
I was able to help copy there at the beginning.
Then I started to translate.
So in three months I was able to translate for the other Roma asylum seekers.
I was able to do basic administration.
And I have practically started to improve myself in that system of Britain.
And I already knew what, where and how it works.
So even after work, I went to people's homes
and started helping them, for example, with phone calls.
Or with dealing with how, for example, to change energy suppliers.
I started doing different things like that.
And I think that this started my life career,
or the life path of the social sphere of helping other people.
During that first year, when we couldn't work yet,
both my parents and I joined a local college where we learned English.
It was basic English for foreigners.
My siblings went to school long ago.
They entered elementary school right from the beginning.
And as soon as we improved our English,
of course I wanted to continue.
I wanted to fulfill a dream that I couldn´t fulfill
in the Czech Republic and get to the university.
It took a while.
But in 2006, in addition to my job, already while working as a police officer,
I joined the Open University,
which I studied remotely while working.
And I graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology and criminology.
After that year, when we got a work permit,
we acted immediately.
That very day I went to McDonald's,
where I saw that they were hiring, in the town of Southend-on-Sea.
So I went there, I got a job
and I immediately started working there, the simplest works.
There weren't that many job opportunities in Southend-on-Sea,
that seaside town, so you couldn't really choose.
And that's why, I think it was in May, a year later,
my friend found out, through some of his family and friends,
that in Peterborough, which is about three hours from Southend-on-Sea,
that there are a lot of job opportunities.
And that they want to try it there.
So I went with them.
I found housing there
and subsequently moved my whole family there.
And so we settled in Peterborough,
where there was really a lot of work, we could choose.
Of course, it was still manual work in the fields, in factories.
Packaging, cutting flowers and various things like that.
Or in a potato factory, carrying sacks and so on.
But it was a well-paid job.
There was really a lot of work, we could do a lot of overtime.
So I suddenly started to have relatively decent amount of money.
And for me, as a young person, it was very interesting.
So I went through the work in the factories first.
Subsequently, in those factories, when I already knew English well,
I helped other immigrants to translate.
This was noticed by my superiors and I became a team leader in the factory.
And I gradually started to build my career.
From those factories, I transferred to the Tesco supermarket,
where I started working first at the shelves.
Then I transferred to security, where I guarded the store at night.
And during that job in security, I also started getting to know the policemen.
We always called the police to deal with some theft.
That's how I got to know the policemen.
We started talking about what it would be like if I worked in the police.
And during the time I worked at Tesco, I had some other activities.
I helped the local bureau with the translation.
I helped immigrants fill out various forms, make phone calls and stuff like that.
And at the same time I decided to run for the local office for the Labor party.
And since it didn't work out, I finished third in that order,
so right after the election my friend Greg, a policeman at the time, have told me:
"You didn't get into politics, don't you want to try the police?"
And I told him that I would like to.
But around 2003 or 2004, I already tried to join the police.
I went to the police station and I was told
that I had to be British to work for the police.
And my friend Greg told me:
"No, no, that's not true at all, they gave you the wrong information."
And he helped me get through the process and apply for the PCSO position,
which is Police Community Support Officers.
Something like the equivalent of a city policeman in the Czech Republic or Slovakia.
So I joined the city police for the first year.
And after a year, I was transferred to the state police,
where I worked for the next ten years.
And it was during that police work that I decided to go to college.
When I started working as a community police officer,
my main job was to talk.
Talking to people outside and really spending most, 95% of my time outside on the street.
Going to schools, nursing homes, shops,
talking to people outside in the park and so on.
On the one hand, to present a positive image of the police,
but at the same time, of course, to obtain data or information about the crime.
And at the same time helping people in different situations.
So that was my main job.
A community police officer in Britain is equipped only with a pencil and a notebook.
That's all a community worker has.
Because really, that's all he should have.
And that job de facto gave me the opportunity to improve my communication skills.
Because, of course, if a person has to make do with his mouth and his communication,
then he will learn to deal with people in different situations.
Even in situations that could possibly be classified as very dangerous,
one must learn to rely only on that communication.
After that year, when I transferred to the police,
I actually spent the first two years dealing with the probationary part there.
There I dealt with absolutely everything from A to Z.
Domestic violence, theft, some altercations in the nightclubs.
Practically the whole range, right up to sudden death.
Or even something like the first intervention in an incident,
such as murders or more serious crimes.
But practically from the beginning of my work as a community police officer,
I started to get involved in an area
that was completely unknown to me until then.
And that was modern day slavery.
Or the exploitation of people.
Of course, until that time, like most people,
I thought that this was happening maybe only somewhere in the third world.
But that it cannot after all concern us, the people of Peterboroug, or in Britain.
But I suddenly found out when mainly Czech and Slovak men,
victims of human trafficking, started coming to me.
And since I had their trust,
they started telling me things that completely shocked me.
And not only me, but also the police.
Because the police at that time had no information about the fact
that slavery was also happening between Czech and Slovak,
and possibly other European communities.
So basically we opened a kind of imaginary Pandora's box,
where from one or two people or victims at the beginning
we identified several dozen over the course of a few years.
I think I had about 86 victims of human trafficking in the first two years.
And at least 95% of them were men of Czech and Slovak origin
who were transported by these exploiters to Britain for work purposes.
For me, when I was able to identify and gain the trust of these victims,
of course my great interest was to do something about it.
And above all, of course, that's how trust is built,
when we really show the victim that something is really going on.
So we worked and I got into areas of policing
that normally as a community police officer I might not have gotten into at all.
And subsequently, as a state police officer, neither.
I was able to work with detectives,
with the organized crime unit, with the secret police.
And with other units, with which we gradually uncovered
the structure of these gangs or these large families
that transported their victims to Britain.
And many of them were then arrested and subsequently convicted.
Of course, several of them managed to avoid the punishment.
And that is mostly thanks to the fact
that they knew the victims personally, they knew their families, where they came from.
And most of the time, when it went to court,
the exploiters threatened the families
and the victim often had to withdraw the complaint.
And thus it was not always possible to ensure an adequate punishment.
But we had very good results in Peterborough.
At least those who were not punished left completely.
Either from Peterborough or the UK.
The victims got help and were able to start a whole new life.
These were often men who were homeless in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Drug or alcohol addicts.
And actually, with the help we gave them in Britain,
they were able to stand on their own two feet and start living normally.
When I joined as a community police officer,
I didn't experience any incidents.
Or no negative feedback from my colleagues.
But the first time I encountered a hint of racism or prejudice
was when I joined the state police.
Where one of my colleagues, a British woman,
started making stupid insinuations about me and my Pakistani colleague.
And she said, "Because of people like you,
my father has to wait a long time for health care.
You get some preferential benefits.
You got into the police because you're a foreigner."
She tried to imitate our accent.
We somehow didn't solve it, because we were new in the police.
We didn't want to confront her in any way.
But our colleague, also British, heard it several times in that office.
He reported it.
And that colleague was out of employment within three months.
Actually, she was fired right away.
She didn't do it only to us, but she had this behavior towards other people as well.
So it piled up and that colleague got fired.
So that's how seriously they take it.
And for us it was a good sign that the police are taking it seriously.
And that one can trust the police.
That we can report it and not be afraid that nothing will happen.
Of course in the following years, I would say
until the Brexit referendum, I didn't encounter
any hints or any comments.
But after that referendum, it was as if the imaginary Pandora's box was opened again,
and people, colleagues in the police, began to feel that they could say things
that they might have only thought until then.
So one began to feel the hidden racism.
I can give an example.
I came with the arrested person to the pre-trial detention cell
and the sergeant who is sitting behind the desk and taking the data,
instead of talking to him about why he is there, he looked at me and said:
"What about you, Peter? do you have your passport ready
and your baggage packed for when we deport you?"
Really such stupid and inappropriate comments.
So it started to accumulate and accumulate.
Ja počas toho, čo som robil policajta,
During my time as a police officer, already in 2010, actually it started already in 2009,
I started thinking about what I could do after the work.
Of course, I helped people during work,
but I couldn't handle everything.
And I couldn't do everything during working hours.
People often asked me to call somewhere for them or to fill a document.
And I began to perceive that there really is a need for some community work.
So in 2009, I and a few of my friends
founded an organization called ČESLO,
which was made up of the words Če and Slovakia.
And we functioned as a community association.
We helped people, we did various activities.
But after a few months I started to perceive,
it was indicated to me but not directly to me,
but I began to perceive those prejudices.
I was the only Roma in that management.
And my colleagues, when we were planning an event, said:
"We can't tell the gypsies,
because then we would have to worry about our wallets and purses."
Which of course got me completely.
I saw it as we are on the same boat, we are all in a foreign country.
We should stand and help each other.
But they didn't see it that way.
So I decided to leave.
Also my friend Jozef Kopečný, "Pepa", left with me,
with whom we founded a new organization called COMPAS.
It was actually a combination of the words Community Partnership Group
and from that, from those first letters, COMPAS was born.
The aim and idea of COMPAS has always been
precisely the community partnership.
So that there really isn't any segregation, so that we don't exclude anyone.
So that it really is for everyone.
So we started working in communities, we did various activities, projects.
We have established a community library.
We started English lessons.
We had Czech language lessons there.
We invited the Czech and Slovak consulates to Peterborough,
where we provided premises and volunteers
so that they could help people with passports and various other things.
So that people don't have to travel to London and spend money and time on the journey.
So we did various activities like that there.
It was sometime in the spring or summer of 2015
when I was in a meeting about exploitation.
My boss was there, my colleagues were there too.
And during that meeting, I watched as my phone kept ringing.
But I couldn't talk.
So I picked it up right during the break.
It was my wife and she told me such a strange sentence:
"You'll probably need a new suit."
And I said: - What do you mean?
And she said:
You received a letter saying that you have been nominated
for the Queen of England's highest award."
Until then, I had no idea what an MBE meant.
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
So I asked my boss and she said:
"That's amazing, that's the highest civilian award from the Queen."
And at that time I thought that maybe someone was playing pranks on me or something like that.
Why me?
So when I got home, I finally read it.
And it was written there that I was really nominated,
that the prime minister had already signed it.
And that now we are just waiting for the queen to sign it
and that only then I will be informed when this order will be handed over to me.
I waited for about two months
and I already began to doubt whether it was really true.
I was already getting quite nervous about it.
And then I got another letter
where it was written that the Queen had already signed it.
And I think it was in November that I will be granted this order.
But there was one minus, one small problem.
And that was in the fact that the Queen can only give the order to British citizens.
And I wasn't British at the time.
Which of course gave my father another reason
or an opportunity to blame me.
Because he told me years before
to get that British passport.
I kept putting it off.
As a result, I could not receive the order from the queen.
And it was given to me by Mike Penning,
who was the minister for policing.
But I saw a huge advantage in that too.
Because if I went to the queen, I could only take one person
to go there with me.
And for me to choose between my wife, who has supported me all these years,
or my friend Pepa, or Kamila,
or my parents, or my children, that would be terribly difficult.
I would be terribly sorry if I had to take only one of them.
Because everyone played their part
in helping me succeed.
And by going to Mike Penning,
it was directly at the Home Office,
it was at the Department of Interior.
And I could bring as many people as I wanted there.
So I took full advantage of it
and I really took the whole family there.
Both of my parents, I had my children, my wife, my friends there.
So it was really amazing.
It was very significant and special for me in that regard.
I still had the opportunity to see the Queen
in the following years at various other events.
So it can be said that I didn't miss out on anything.
And this was a huge advantage for me.
That award, as I found out later,
was given to me for the community work
I did after I finished my job.
Because the award is given for something a person does in addition
to what is expected of him.
I couldn't get that for the police work,
because that would practically be part of my job.
This was extra work and effort, in my spare time, often at my own expense.
And my community work was noticed by several people.
First, they were officials at the city office.
Of course, it was also some of my superiors
who then nominated me for the award.
And subsequently, I was then selected for this award.
It changed my life quite fundamentally, you could say.
But it had two different levels.
One level of course was that it opened a lot of doors
and of course huge popularity.
The year I was awarded, I was
on about twenty different TV stations.
Not only in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, but also in Brazil and other countries.
There were articles about it many more weeks.
I got calls from different shows.
I've been on live and stuff.
So one really enjoyed it
and it was a wonderful opportunity for me to show that positive role model.
Because it was something I really wanted.
So that the majority society can see the positive role models.
So that they don´t always perceive only the negative things that are written in the media,
but to see that it works when people are given the opportunity.
So that was the one sphere of it.
Of course, with everything that happened after the award,
my colleagues at work also began to perceive it some way,
and it can be said that in quite negative way.
And then I started to feel a kind of distance.
Because as I say, I was invited to various conferences.
I was invited and taken from my daily job to various lectures.
And often it was my superiors
who told me to go there, go there, go there.
And my colleagues then felt that they had to do extra work instead of me
and that I was a so-called jolly boy,
that I went on some trips and that I enjoyed myself there.
Of course I felt very sorry,
because I really liked the police work.
And my colleagues and I were a very good team.
But at the same time, I saw a huge potential in that work
and in the fact that we can show the Roma community in this light.
So it was kind of a balancing act.
And at the same time, of course, balancing family life.
One has lost some intimacy.
Or, for example, the possibility of going on vacation and not being around all the time...
For example, people kept coming up to me even at the airport, on the plane.
Can we take a picture with you? and so.
So, on the one hand, I really enjoyed it,
and on the other hand, it was enough for my children and my wife.
I kept running off all the time.
Or I was always at some conferences.
So it had more such elements.
But overall I have to say that I really enjoyed it.
And it was something tremendous...
When one realizes that I came to Britain
as an ordinary refugee who worked in a factory at the time
and I had practically no vision.
And I thought to myself, what am I going to do here, in this country.
And suddenly, some fifteen years later,
I was awarded the Queen's highest civilian award.
So I think that was a huge thing.