Security/ Stability/ Reforms
Combating Corruption and Crime

Police of the Czech Republic, the National Drug Headquarters (NDH)

The long-term experience of criminological practice has revealed that organised groups involved in drug crime compress their shipments with various metallic compression devices when shipping larger volumes of drugs. Seizing the compressed drug shipments is a daily routine of police drug units. By the ability of identifying whether diverse drug shipments were compressed with the same device, specialised Police units will be able to find the type of machine and the source territory where it was compressed, i.e. where an important part of the whole organised group of criminals is located.

The goal of the project is to improve security and the rule of law in the Czech Republic through increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the fight against international drug trafficking thanks to a better identification of the origin and the routes of compressed drug deliveries and shipments. The specific objectives of the project are improving the currently used system of detection of mechanoscopic traces on the surface of the compressed drug shipments, providing the existing system with more advanced technological equipment (hardware and software upgrading) and through starting a database which could be included into the already existing European Drug Profiling System (EDPS) and the Europol Synthetic Drugs Database (ESDDS).

(i): organisation of an international coordinating conference; (ii): purchase of standard hardware and software and development of special software to start the routine operation of the new RELIEF system, through two public tenders; (iii): five business trips abroad to present the Relief system and its application in the international environment; (iv): business trip to the Hague with the aim of preparing the incorporation of the system into the Europol Synthetic Drugs Database and the European Drug Profiling System and (v): organisation of an international conference to present the developed RELIEF system and recommend its inclusion in the systems of other participating countries.

The expected results are:

• Conference for EU Member States and third countries in Europe held; inclusion into European databases analysed, international cooperation established;
• RELIEF system put in operation, operational documentation prepared, legal rules introduced;
• 5 foreign business trips carried out;
• The new Czech RELIEF system presented at Europol headquarters in the Hague;