By Gunnar Schupelius
The body camera on the uniform can secure important evidence. In Berlin, this instrument is rejected by politicians. There is no plausible reason for this, says Gunnar Schupelius.
It’s always the same game: police officers are filmed during a conflict-ridden operation. A film excerpt that does not show the entire process then appears on the Internet. In response, the anonymous audience raises or lowers their thumb.
Finally, politicians from the Left and the Greens appear and generally accuse the police of violence, a right-wing attitude or even racism when migrants were involved.
It’s been like this for a long time. For example, three and a half years ago, in January 2019, police officers arrested a woman at the main train station. Because she was spitting and clearly had lice, they put a white cloth over her head.
A video appeared on the Internet that only showed this part of the arrest, but not that the woman had hit out beforehand. The officials involved were promptly convicted on the Internet. MEPs from the Greens and Left took the lead on Twitter.
The situation is very similar with the operation of September 9 of this year, which was debated yesterday in the House of Representatives. Police officers visited a Syrian couple in Alt-Hohenschönhausen. The wife (28) was approached because she is said to have followed others. The officers found that there was an arrest warrant for the husband (30), so they had to arrest him.
There was resistance, rude scenes and insults. The woman filmed with her mobile phone and passed the video on to the Left Party in Neukölln, but only the excerpt that recorded the behavior of the police officers. Then the storm broke out on the internet.
Left MP Ferat Kocak convened a kind of tribunal for the press on Saturday. There, the Syrian couple used an interpreter to demand the dismissal of the police officers involved. Kocak found the officials guilty, MP Niklas Schrader (left) called them “racists”.
Both politicians have not heard the other side. You don’t even know how the police describe the operation. Apparently she doesn’t care.
The cops are on the defensive. You lack the evidence. They couldn’t film the operation because they don’t have a body camera. This device, which is attached to the uniform, has long been in use in other federal states.
The Berlin police only have a test run with 20 cameras and they are not allowed to be used in private homes either. For this you would have to change the General Safety and Order Act (ASOG) and that is not wanted by Red-Green-Red.
In short: police officers who are randomly filmed and then end up pilloried on the Internet are not allowed to film themselves. Firstly, this is unimaginably absurd and, secondly, it is meanness towards the officials who put themselves in danger. This Senate has moved away from those who maintain law and order, there is no other way to put it.
Is Gunnar Schupelius right? Call: 030/2591 73153, or email: [email protected]