Friday, September 04, 2009

Targeting the Police

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated two articles from Bild about the horrendous conditions under which German police are currently working in the cities of Hamburg and Bremen, plus an overview of the current crisis of violence against the police.

First, from Hamburg:

We stick out our necks for €1800 a month

It was an orgy of violence against the police: about a thousand totally unleashed blackhoods raged in street battles. They threw stones, bottles, heavy firecrackers — and injured fifty police officers.

Christin Richter (24, police sergeant 1st class, €1800 [circa $2500] net per month) experienced one of her toughest missions so far: “We were targeted with bottles thrown from balconies. Once deployed, you must leave out all your emotions. But the fear comes afterwards, when you think about it and see the pictures.”

The policewoman is angry: “We are used as targets for political objectives. And for rioters to get their kicks. I would hope that they’d show a bit more respect. As police officers, we are not empty shells, but personalities. Nice people who also have a family.”

Malte Griese (24, Police sergeant, €1800 net) was hit by a bottle: “Suddenly I felt a burning pain, blood ran down my neck. I had to be taken to the hospital. Fortunately, the cuts were not very deep. One wonders what goes on in their heads to do this!”

Pophal Frank (36, Police Sergeant first class, €2000 net, has children): “They threw pieces of broken mirrors at us like Frisbees. The atmosphere at such operations is becoming increasingly aggressive, the inhibition level ever lower. “

It’s hard to grasp, but the left-wing politician Christiane Schneider (61) [a Socialist, in the eighties a supporter of the left-wing terror organization Rote Armee Fraktion, favors the protection of illegal migrants and is now on the Hamburg city council for “Die Linke”, the political successor of the DDR] blamed the cops for the excesses during the riots. She spoke of “unprovoked police violence” against “peaceful demonstrators” and called a special meeting about the “excessive use” of violence … by the police.

Joachim Lenders, National Deputy Chairman of the German Police Union: “The statements of Mrs. Schneider are totally unreal. Our police only respond to attacks of violence!”

And from Bremen:
- - - - - - - - -
Violence in Bremen against police officers

The incidents are piling up, and the attacks are becoming increasingly brutal. Police officers on their many missions have to fear for their lives.

[Bremen-Osterholz] In the past year alone there were over 350 attacks on police and judicial officials. This is an upward trend. Recent examples: In the Züricher Straße, a German Turk (22) jumped on a policewoman and hit her with a targeted Kung-Fu kick in the back. She had only come to mediate in a family dispute. She suffered severe bruises, and had to be medically treated.

Two days later in Vahr [North-East Bremen]. A policewoman (27) wanted to establish the identity of a drunk (37). The man beat her till she was an invalid.

[Bremen-Gröpelingen] Fear travels along on patrol. A horrible culmination was the attack on a Police car in Gröpelingen, West-Bremen. Four teenagers (14-16) tried to murder two policemen with Molotov cocktails.

[Bremen-Oslebshausen] Police spokeswoman Franka Haedke (31): “Our opponents are ever more disrespectful and aggressive.” Two days ago, officers on patrol in Oslebshausen had to bring an offender to jail. Haedke: “When my colleagues went to the apartment, they were insulted and threatened by the whole family. A fight was narrowly avoided.”

Who are the perpetrators? A police spokesman: “Often these are Germans with an immigrant background.. A third of the violent offenders are drunk or stoned (on drugs).”

A summary of the general situation for German police:

Police as victims of violence

German law enforcement is increasingly forced to defend itself against attacks. In North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Schleswig-Holstein, and Hamburg, the number of so-called acts of resistance to law enforcement soared to record highs in 2008, as disclosed by police-unions and ministries.

Also in other German states some dramatic increases are being reported. “Our colleagues are grappling with the brutalization of society,” said the chairman of the Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP) [Police Union], Jörg Müller.

According to the GdP, in North Rhine-Westphalia during the past year there were more than 6000 cases of “resistance to law enforcement officials,” as the West German Allgemeine Zeitung reported. This was a record: since 1998 (3200 cases) the number of assaults has nearly doubled. This figure includes attacks on judicial officers and bailiffs.

In other states a similar trend is noted: in Schleswig-Holstein in 2008 there was a record number of 713 acts of resistance against the police alone; in the previous year there were 545. In Hamburg, the number increased by 40% to 1153 cases.

“For the most minor events, there is no halt to it,” said the deputy GdP chief Uwe Kossel. This happens to patrolmen as well as police officers during demonstrations or football matches. “Even around the Reeperbahn [red light district in Hamburg] every weekend we are presented with the whole circus,” Uwe Kossel said. Though it now “only concerns violence” there. In Berlin there is an average of nine attacks on policemen every day. Union members in eastern and southern Germany also complain about the increasing violence against their police colleagues.

What will the consequences be?

In response, the police unions call for drastic sentencing: “It cannot be that an attack on policemen is punished with a fine or up to two years in prison. That is like poaching,” said the vice-chairman federal-DPolG Joachim Lenders. The Hamburg Interior Senator Christopher Ahlhaus announced that at the next Interior conference in June sentencing will be an issue.

15 comments:

Tuan Jim said...

Can someone remind me - is Germany like the UK or Japan where beat cops aren't authorized to carry guns?

Markos blog i USA said...

There is no reason for fighting violent immigrants in the streets. They should do the way its done in the USA, capture them, convict them and expel them. Now its to much tolerance of the violent people in Europe, that must end, how else is this problem solved? Otherwise it's suicide.

thll said...

I have no sympathy for the police whatsoever. They get beaten by immigrants - good, maybe some sense might get beaten into them.

Were these rioters ethnic Swedes, Germans, or other European peoples the police would have no hesitation in cracking their skulls for their 'mindless vandalism' - and they'd have the support of left wing politicians too. As it is the police were pelted with missiles hurled by immigrants - and the police response: a pathetic bleat, "...why don't they treat us like human beings?' The left wing politician, '...it's the fault of the police'.

Maybe it's time the police woke up. Maybe they need a few more alarm calls from immigrants.

nimbus said...

I used to live in Germany in the late 70's/80's, and it was so safe back then (when Germany was mostly German).

Skalman said...

Sory guys. I just see two problems.
Spineless leftwing do-good politicians with no sense of reality. And soft cops.

They have guns. Why not authorize the police to use their weapons?

Om every occasion where violence is used against law enforcement officers there should be neither hesitation nor inhibitions. Please excuse for calling these people(?) names but to me they in every way possible behave like scum and vermin and should be dealt with as such.

If the state is supposed to be able to keep their monopoly on violence they must act accordingly and deal with these incidents harshly, swiftly and brutally.

The use of live fire without consequense should be the only answer to these rioters and criminals. Nothing less, nothing more.

If I´m brutal and uncivilised? Maybe. But frankly I see no other way of creating and maintaining peace under these conditions and the alternative if everything is left as it is seems a lot worse.

Unknown said...

I was born and i am living in Bremen (Oslebshausen, next to Gröpelingen).

When a Policeman use his Weapon he is with one lag in jail.
There will be a a lawsuit against him and an investigation to determinate if he has acted right.
The use of deadly force is the ultima ratio, and only allowed when the life of himself or others is in immediate danger.
And this is good and right.
We have Teasers since one and a half year i htink,
an only once a policeman had used of, when he was threatened by an armed Man.

On the other hand you hear of those riots and out of control demonstrations where policemen act brutal and beat up innocent people,
or at least handled them ruff.
But in this article you can read how stressfull can such situation be for policemen. And they are not uniformed robots, but human beings too.

Those incidents like that with the Molotov are rare examples.
But there is an growing disrespect in the low educated population and the population with emigrant background against policemen, which seems quite a new phenomena growing at the last 10-15 years.

Watchman said...

All the policemen and -women should organize a strike. It would be a great wake up call for the leftist politicians and their supporters.

Let people do whatever they want but police won't be coming to the rescue.

Skalman said...

Ox King: The procedures required when a police officer has discharged his weapon is just about the same in Sweden. Under normal circumstances I would agree with those procedures and your opinions alike.

However this is not a normal circumstance. Or at least I do not find it to be a normal situation when rioters can get away with hurling bottles, hose bombs, darts, broken window panes etc at the very representatives of law and order and outright criminals can do almost the same without fear of getting neither arrested nor convicted. All of those objects are not only potentially deadly but also thrown with the sole and intended purpose of causing severe damage to the police officers thus creating fear and a feeling of not being safe.

If this is accepted as a normal situation we are very far down the road to both anarchy and civil war which in turn will lead us straight into a tribal society full of violence and mayhem.

That is not the way I would wish for our relatively civilised society to end up.

No matter how unpleasant things get when using violence it sometimes has to be deployed in defense of our core values no matter if it contradicts those very values.

And as the state itself have, and rightly should have, a monopoly of violence to defend itself who would be more suited to deploy that utter violence in times when it is needed than the public servants trained for both upholding the law and enforcing it with violence if needed, the police force?

And about all the mumbo-jumbo about police brutality against "innocent demonstrators" I´m sorry to say that I´ve yet to see it happen in a western society.
Not once in modern has there been an occasion in the west when the police could be accused of overreacting and deploying to much violence during a demo. Quite the contrary.

laine said...

This is another example of what happens when you bring in people who have beliefs the antithesis of your own culture and encourage them to keep those beliefs that have made their home countries dungholes.

There are cultures that have no respect for the police, who hate them based on how police behave in their home countries, either as 1) state thugs as in Iran or as 2) corrupt crooks as in Jamaica or 3) unable to control criminals as in Mexico.

People from such cultures do not suddenly develop respect for police when they arrive in Western countries. In fact the colonizing type of Muslims consider the police a pesky group who like the state that employs them has no right to lord it over Muslims. Muslims cannot and will not be ruled by non-Muslims.

Typically, in Jamaican areas of Western cities, after a gun crime at an after hours club etc., if anyone even calls the police, all witnesses have stampeded AWAY from the scene. If the police are nearby and arrive promptly enough to prevent people from leaving, they find a pile of weapons in the middle of the room that belong to no one in the room...

This is a recipe for overwhelming the thin blue line in the near future and with it societal order. Feminization of police forces by adding lots of petite women who command no respect and obligatory diversity classes that make police into social workers contributes to their declining authority.

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

“Our colleagues are grappling with the brutalization of society,” said the chairman of the Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP) [Police Union], Jörg Müller.

The decivilising processes - everyone as a victim and powerless - if everyone is a victim and deprived of power then terror prevails.

Unknown said...

Those big riots like the one in Hamburg happening maybe once a year.
It is not nice, but not the end of the civil order.
Mostly there a few in a demonstration who may throw things at the police for personal kick, but the majority are peaceful demonstrators.
You just can`t use lethal weapons in such situation. And no one here will ever do so. Such behavior is unthinkable.
Water canons, teargas maybe rubber projectiles are the only thinkable answer, when rocks start flying.
You have to isolate and arrest the stone thrower, and make an trial against him.

It sounds for some guys too inconvenient, but i really don`t want to live in a country where policemen start shooting carelessly because this is an "easier" option!

Force and brutality solves no problems, but lead to the other way.
You can see that in the USA,
where despite the use of firearms, much ruffer handling and death penalty crime still exists, and this way worse then here in germany.
In Countries where you get a hand hacked off for theft, theft still happens.

It will be in most cases more efficient to fight the reason why people theft or had so much disrespect in the government and its authorities, instead of punish the single criminals again and again while the number of theme increases.
This is sure not such an easy way,
needs effort and an open mind,
but may be the only successfull way of handle those problems in the longterm.

Skalman said...

Ox King: Of course those riots are not the end of civil order. They are only the beginning.

Aaaahhh. "The majority are peaceful demonstrators". That´s a nice and old one. Of course they are. The problem is, as with "moderate muslims", that they are not only quiet but also, in many cases, are defending the more violent ones.

And of course the police can´t just fire at will at any target. But in case there are riots where police officers lives are at stake, as have been the fact on several occasions during the last decade, they should be allowed to use deadly force in defense of themselves and colleagues without any consequenses at all. And at least they should be authorized to use VERY powerful means of disabling those throwing rocks, bottles etc as well as those wearing masks.

We need to get to the point were the mere presence of violent demonstrators(or as I prefer to call them, terrorists)is as unwanted as a heart attack. This can only be achieved by making violent demonstrations a very unpleasant affair and also a risky business for those "peaceful ones".

And I´m truly sorry, but I beg to differ when it comes to the "being nice and openminded" thing. That is a way you can act when there is respect of law and order and the people set to keep this order.

The reason we´re here, relatively spared from violence, is our predecessors use of VERY brutal means of creating law and order. A clumsy translation of an old swedish saying is literally "Law is at the tip of a spear" and that is how our modern and peaceful states were created. Through massive violence against those not willing to comply to civic behaviour.

All these "fight the reasons"-thingies are useless when it comes to ideological reasons for using violence. The lefty nutcases and their islamic counterparts do not care the least if you try to "fight the reasons". On the contrary they will be even more violent since the only way to fight their reasons is either by brute force or appeasement and by appeasement we will go deeper and deeper into the h*llhole of either an islamic society or a socialist one(eg Cambodja, North Korea etc).
Both very brutal and uncivilised.

The Baron has explained it most splendidly in the post he called "Barking up the wrong tree". Read it again, closely and in detail, and you will see what I mean.

Bedrich said...

Pinochet did a good job with Chile. He came to power in a country ravaged by communist/socialist thugs, and 2 years later it was peaceful. He also managed to keep a fat population of the great white shark alongside the Chilean coast. For me that's a win-win situation.

Unknown said...

Ok, it seems i landed on a page wich is somehow against muslim people!?
(Just followed a link on twitter because of the subject Bremen inside,
and wanted to clear the picture for outsiders)
Well when i get i right maybe an argumentation here would lead to nowhere.
I have many turkish and other muslim friends,
some of them barely not to differ from Germans.

And left stone throwers,
demonstrators and muslims are three different things.
And also such few out of control demonstrations and riots as described are not the end nor the start of the end of the civil order.
Just a few idiots who want to bang their heads with the police.
And this is not an growing movement or such thing, the exist for at least 30 years and will change nothing.
They just as stupid as right or any other extremists.
Just as people who locked on to an stereotype of an oh so bad enemy.

I think more i don`t say here. Bye.

nimbus said...

Buh bye OxKing. Check back in here in 10 years (or less!) and tell us how your country is going.