The police and the judiciary simply don’t lock away the climate stickers

By Gunnar Schupelius

Climate activists who stick around again and again can be taken into police custody for 48 hours. This is possible according to the Berlin Security Act (§ 30 and § 31 ASOG).

But that is exactly what failed on Monday. The police and judiciary were unable to lock away even the most persistent climate ultras. How this failure came about is difficult to understand because the authorities gave different information.

The police said on Tuesday at 11:11 a.m. that they had “supplied 49 people (…) to central custody” on Monday. From there they were released “by court order”. “They were all able to continue on their way in the evening,” it said.

The Berlin court spokeswoman Lisa Jani contradicted this a little later (11.48 a.m.). She explained that “the responsible police forces” had made “a request for detention in only one case”.

The police then withdrew their statements and said at 1:33 p.m. that they wanted to take a total of 71 people into custody. In two cases, this was requested from the judge – and rejected. The other 69 people had to be “released in the course of the evening as well”, “since the time constraints no longer allowed a demonstration (to the judge)”.

So all 71 climate ultras were released, although the police assumed that they would stick again. 69 of them were not even brought before the judge because of the “time constraints”.

We wanted to know what that meant, what were the deadlines and why couldn’t they be met? But the press office of the police did not want to give us any information on this.

Colleagues who do not want to be named describe their experiences like this: You send the toughest case to the judge and see if he puts it behind bars. If he doesn’t, you save yourself the work and don’t even apply for custody for the rest of the time.

Experiences with the judiciary are described by police officers as frustrating. For example this one: In December 2022, the police issued a “preventive ban” on climate activists sticking to Berlin’s main streets. The ban was lifted by the Berlin administrative court on April 14.

The examples of Munich and London show that there is another way. In Munich, climate stickers were taken into police custody for up to 30 days, and the judiciary played along. In London, a German climate sticker was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison without parole. He had blocked a Thames bridge in October 2022 and, according to the verdict, forced 565,000 motorists.