Lower Saxony’s Minister of the Interior, Boris Pistorius (SPD), admitted that the competent authority had failed after the police deployed at the Wolfsburg train station against fans of Werder Bremen.
“It is also part of the error culture in a modern police force that corresponding errors are recognized and named. This is the only way to do things better in the future,” he said on Friday.
Werder Ultras did not come to the Bundesliga game in Wolfsburg (2-2) on Saturday as a protest. The fans had previously found searches and personal identification of officials at Wolfsburg Central Station disproportionate.
A report requested by the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior came to the conclusion that “the necessary requirements” did not exist for the so-called control points in Wolfsburg. “Neither with regard to the danger of using pyrotechnics in the stadium, nor with regard to possible physical altercations between rival fan groups,” it says.
“If fans were wrongly searched due to the illegal measure, we apologize,” Pistorius said. The examination showed that the risk forecast and the measures taken by the police were correct in principle and only the selected framework of a control point was incorrect.
A legal requirement for these checkpoints exists if criminal offenses of considerable importance such as serious bodily harm or breach of the peace must be assumed. “Such an assessment would have been too extensive in this specific case after examining the state police headquarters,” the statement continues.
The police had feared the use of pyrotechnics before the game. On this occasion, the police “carried out search measures to ensure pyrotechnics in clearly defined groups of people, in particular certain ultra-groups”.