Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) Photo: DAVIDS/Sven Darmer
By Axel Lier
Interior Senator Iris Spranger defended the Berlin police force against accusations of racism by the Left Party. A comment from BZ editor Axel Lier.
That was seven minutes that sat!
Interior Senator Iris Spranger (61, SPD) had never been seen like this before: When a left-wing politician on the Interior Committee said the Berlin police had a “huge problem” with racism and weren’t doing anything about it, she went steep for minutes.
Spranger leaned on the table with both hands, spread his shoulders and gave a full broadside: “I’m angry”, “emotional” and “can’t listen to it from back there anymore,” she scolded.
Clear commitments to their police officers, bodycams, control receipts and tasers followed. She spoke of racism and attacks against police officers, renovation backlog and the attack on her citizens’ office. Finally plain text from the senator!
Those were clear sentences for the more than 30,000 police officers and firefighters – and for their own coalition parties, who didn’t even want to clap for it.