The fatal shooting of a 16-year-old refugee in Dortmund by a police inspector has fueled new resentment in parts of the public. Allegations surfaced again that some officials had their guns too loose in their holsters. The raw numbers say otherwise.
Viktor G. fired wildly. On that evening, November 22, 2020, the projectiles from his two firearms hit the facades of the houses in the neighborhood. Windows shattered and cars were damaged. When the first patrol cars arrived, the master plasterer opened fire again, and a bullet pierced the hand of a 60-year-old police officer.
Now save articles for later in “Pocket”.
A special task force (SEK) placed the marksman at a house entrance. Shots were fired again when Viktor G. raised one of his weapons. Apparently, the perpetrator then held the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger, he collapsed motionless.
The injured police officer has since taken early retirement. The hand injury left permanent damage, and according to his lawyer Christoph Arnold, he has been plagued by a “post-traumatic stress disorder.” The Bonn lawyer has since sued the shooter’s widow for 80,000 euros in damages.
The NRW State Criminal Police Office (LKA) has registered nine attempted homicides and one completed murder as a result of attacks on police officers since the year before last. For 2021, the new LKA situation report counts 18,140 officials as victims of violent crimes. Although criminal proceedings in this area have fallen by a good six percentage points, the victim rate rose again slightly compared to 2020, despite the temporary corona lockdown phases.
“I have the impression that the inhibition threshold for criminals has fallen again since the pandemic, and the quality of violence against police officers is evidently increasing,” summarizes attorney Arnold, who mainly represents law enforcement officers. According to the LKA report, officers were threatened with a firearm 32 times, and shots were fired in eight cases. The analysts also counted 56 knife attacks.
The danger situation does not stop this year either. In January, a suspected robber attacked police officers with a knife who had accompanied him to a clinic in Cologne-Longerich for health checks. The officers were slightly injured. The 52-year-old perpetrator was initially able to escape, but was arrested shortly thereafter.
The NRW situation report “Violence against police officers” lists exactly 7564 attacks. The rate of serious or dangerous bodily harm rose by almost one percentage point to 349 acts. That means: Police officers between the Rhine and Ruhr are seriously injured almost every day. A good 800 law enforcement officers had to be hospitalized, including 224 female officers.
When it comes to crimes, resistance or physical attacks against law enforcement officers are at the top of the list. All too often, the delinquents are drunk or high on drugs. It often bangs at night on the weekends on the amusement miles in Düsseldorf, Cologne or elsewhere. At the Aachener Weiher in the cathedral city, a patrol car crew was bombarded with bottles on Sunday night in September 2021 in such a way that they could not help a helpless woman. In the middle of the carnival hustle and bustle at the end of February 2022, a 37-year-old man stormed out of a restaurant on the party hotspot Zülpicher Straße towards a police officer and tried to stab him in the neck with a broken bottle. The officer was able to block the attack at the last moment and escaped with minor injuries.
Of the 6,749 attackers last year, 42 carried firearms. Almost 4,800 suspects had a German passport, and almost 2,000 foreign suspects were also registered.
With the sharp increase in corona demonstrations and the lateral thinker scene, the rate of violent crimes against representatives of state power climbed in 2021. Right-wing and left-wing protagonists in particular focus on the police as an “enemy image”. Attacks by left-wing extremists in particular have tripled to 59 cases in the past year. Nine attacks came from the right spectrum.
Corona counter-demos and the rally against the new assembly law at the end of June 2021 in Düsseldorf were particularly tough. At a commemoration event in Wuppertal two months later for the philosopher and communist pioneer Friedrich Engels, the police broke up the protest march because of violations of the ban on face masks. As a result, there were clashes in which twelve demonstrators and four police officers were slightly injured. 50 criminal and administrative offense proceedings were ongoing. According to the LKA, the left-wing extremist scene sees “repression as a state tool for suppressing revolutionary processes and thus as a decisive factor in securing power”. The uniformed law enforcement officer mutates into a hate figure.
Especially in the past few weeks, the discussion about the police picture in this country has flared up again. The fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Senegalese refugee in Dortmund by a police commissioner who, according to the Interior Ministry, wanted to prevent a colleague from being stabbed, has fueled new resentment in parts of the public. Especially since three people in the Rhine and Ruhr died from police projectiles in August alone. Once again there is talk of exaggerated police violence and racist treatment of immigrants. Allegations surfaced again that some officials had their guns too loose in their holsters.
The bare numbers point in a different direction. According to the NRW Ministry of the Interior, 23 people have died from police shots since 2017. According to this, the numbers fluctuate between three and five cases a year. The victims often used knives. Across the country, a good 7,000 crimes involving stabbing weapons were recorded in 2021.
In most cases, however, the officials have to kill dangerous, injured or sick animals with their service weapons. This was the case 1,928 times last year.
In the five years to 2021, the police fired on people in 87 cases. This last resort is only allowed to protect life and limb. A police officer in Bergisch-Gladbach recently shot and critically injured a 29-year-old disturber of the peace when he approached the officer with knives.
Just five days ago, a SEK unit disabled a 38-year-old from Krefeld with a shot in the leg. First, the man had threatened a neighbor and her child with death. When officers arrived, the knife was rushed towards the emergency services. Earlier he had yelled, “Either you die or I die.”
