The Romani Cultural and Arts Company’ 4th profile will be of Petr Torak MBE
Since 2005 Petr has worked within various governmental and non-governmental organisations, promoting wellbeing, community safety and cohesion within Peterborough.
In 2006 Petr joined the Cambridgeshire Constabulary as a Police Community Support Officer, working in the most diverse part of Peterborough. Due to his unique skills he was placed into a cohesion team and his role was to engage with migrants and refugees. He has identified a large scale human trafficking OCG (organised criminal group) exploiting hundreds of vulnerable males from Slovakia and the Czech Republic into the UK for labour purposes and provided bespoke service to the victims.
In 2008 Petr became a Police Constable and continued working in Peterborough. Beside his day to day duties of a regular Constable he has continued assisting specialist teams in investigating modern slavery, safeguarding vulnerable victims and identifying perpetrators. Over the years, Petr has identified over 120 victims of trafficking, delivered dozens of presentations to pupils at schools, students at universities, police officers, NHS staff, postal workers and many other professionals. Because of his extensive knowledge and achievements, Petr was invited to present the best practice to police forces in other European countries.
Recognising the need to improve relationship between police and marginalised communities, Petr has set up a police staff association called GRTPA (Gypsy Roma Traveller Police Association). GRTPA created a platform for supporting officers from GRT background, promoting equality and fostering good relationships between the police and GRT communities.
Even though Petr has always been passionate about being a police officer, he has recently decided to resign and to come out from his comfort zone by utilising his skills, experience and energy for society on a national level.
In 2010 Petr set up a community-led organisation COMPAS (soon to be a charity). This organisation promotes community harmony by bringing people from different walks of life together and sharing their culture with each other. Petr’s aim is to tackle mental health (predominantly social isolation) by creating opportunities for people to interact with each other. His team of volunteers and Petr are also very keen on promoting education and for that reason they have established a Saturday School to teach native languages and English for people with English as second language.
Follow this link for more information: www.petrtorak.com
The Romani Cultural and Arts Company is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites.