In communist Czechoslovakia, I wanted to become a detective
Radek Slavík was born in February of 1969 in Velké Meziříčí, but he spent most of his childhood in Velké Beranov on the outskirts of Jihlava. In the 1980s, he studied at a grammar school in Jihlava, then wanted to become a criminalist, so he went to a police academy of the National Security Corps (SNB). In October 1988, he joined SNB as an officer with the rank of sergeant. In March 1989, while still a student, he married his wife Petra, whom he had known since grammar school. In 1990 he graduated from the police academy. He worked for the SBN and later for the police until 1995. However, he did not join the Criminal Investigation Department. He guarded important institutions instead, for example, the Constitutional Court building in Brno or the building of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. In 1995 he accepted a job offer at the Ježek brewery in Jihlava in the logistics department. He witnessed how the brewery fared in the hands of the Austrian owners who bought the company in the 1990s as part of the coupon privatization. In 2022 he lived in Jihlava.