25 police officers are to ensure law and order at Berlin’s drug hotspot Kottbusser Tor. So far, however, only one officer has applied for the job advertisement, the chief of police said. “Compulsory obligations” should not exist.
The work in the new police station at Kottbusser Tor in Berlin-Kreuzberg is obviously not very popular with many police officers. In the first “recruitment process” within the police authority, only one officer applied, said police chief Barbara Slowik on Monday in the interior committee of the House of Representatives. But then other police officers would have volunteered as part of the usual and constant rotation from the operational hundreds to the local police stations.
Slowik emphasized that there could be no question of “compulsory obligations”. She called the new police station a “decisive module in the security concept” for the Kottbusser Tor. The police union (GdP) had criticized that the guard was more of a political measure and therefore unpopular.
Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) said that after the opening on February 15, 25 officers would work in several shifts in the police station. Three police officers are said to be sitting there all the time. However, there is still the usual presence of police officers on the streets at Kottbusser Tor. Last year, the police there put in a total of 33,700 hours of service.
The new police station opens on the first floor of a high-rise building in the overpass over Adalbertstrasse. According to the Senate, the costs for the conversion of the rooms on the first floor remained somewhat below the planned framework at around 3.24 million euros.
The area around the Kottbusser Tor, also known as “Kotti”, has been characterized by poverty, drugs and violent crime for years.
