So far these are only indications. There is no clear evidence, no clear answers, even as to why Mouhamed D. was killed by four bullets from a police submachine gun in the north of Dortmund in the late afternoon of August 8, 2022. But if North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (nickname: “the black sheriff”), the chief employer of 40,500 police officers, publishes an interim report from the Dortmund public prosecutor’s office and has to admit that these findings “create a new situation” – then this is also the case an indication. And another indication of the suspicion that all sorts of things must have gone wrong with the use of twelve officers against a single, apparently confused and suicidal 16-year-old boy from Senegal.
Two things alarmed Reul. In the meantime, Carsten Dombert, the senior public prosecutor in Dortmund, is no longer investigating just one, but five NRW police officers. The CDU politician was also startled by the fact that the suspicion of the gunman – a 29-year-old police officer – could intensify: In the interim report, which Reul hastily forwarded to the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament, the accusation is no longer just “bodily harm resulting in death “. Now it says the policeman was “suspected of manslaughter.”
Reul’s second shock could turn out to be unfounded. The fact that he was also investigating the suspicion of manslaughter, senior public prosecutor Dombert said in an interview with the SZ, was “not an indication of condensed evidence – but simply a legal standard in the investigation.” Manslaughter was a possibility from the start – “and then, as now, the presumption of innocence applies.”
Why was tragedy the last resort?
What is more explosive is that – in addition to the shooter – four other officials are now considered suspects. This brings the one big question into focus, which drove hundreds of demonstrators to the police station in Dortmund’s Nordstadt just one day after the fatal shots of August 8: Why can twelve police officers shoot a young person who is crouching in a corner and is 20 centimeters holding a long knife blade in front of your stomach, only stopping it with shots from a submachine gun in the end? Why was tragedy the last resort?
As a lawyer, Dombert formulates the same question differently: Was the use of state power proportionate, and: “Was the end-means relation right?” Doubts plague the chief prosecutor: “We don’t see that as guaranteed.” At least not according to the current status of the investigation.
So the public prosecutor’s office is now investigating the young policewoman who sprayed the young refugee with tear gas (and thus startled him out of his lethargy); So now an investigation is underway into another officer and her co-workers who together (terribly unsuccessfully) used electro-tasers twice on the half-naked boy. All three officers are suspected of causing dangerous bodily harm in office. The fourth accused is the head of operations, who had apparently planned the police action – he is accused of “inciting dangerous bodily harm in office”. All five suspects are now using their right to remain silent.
The Senegalese was addressed in German and Spanish
There were mistakes. Or flaws. “The officials knew that the young man did not speak our language,” confirms Dombert of the SZ. In addition, the officers found “a static situation” when they arrived at the crime scene: young D. was confused, possibly suicidal – but not aggressive towards the police officers. However, no trained negotiating team was called, and there was still no interpreter with French (which is obvious for a Senegalese). D., on the other hand, was spoken to in German and Spanish. And apparently no police officer asked the boy to put his knife down before the escalation of the operation began. According to Dombert to the SZ, “nobody described it that way” during all the witness hearings. Instead, the police gambled that tear gas could force D. to drop the knife to rub his eyes.
The public prosecutor’s office now wants to know whether this procedure is police standard: The NRW Ministry of the Interior should therefore transmit “all service regulations” on the use of tear gas, tasers and submachine guns. And explain how police officers are trained to deal with people who are mentally ill or at risk of suicide. In addition, senior public prosecutor Dombert is hoping for the expertise of the Federal Criminal Police Office: there is a recording of the phone call between the police control center and the supervisor of Mouhamed D. who had alerted the police. More than 20 minutes long, with lots of background noise – from the start of the operation to the fatal shots.