Clan crime: targeting innocents | tagesschau.de


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As of: 03/23/2023 6:27 p.m

For years, politicians and the police have been fighting crime by members of extended families as so-called clan crime. But large-scale controls and raids bring less than hoped – and often hit innocent people.

By Andreas Spinrath, WDR

Controls – during the day, in the late evening, at night. The authorities repeatedly search Ismail Sahan’s shops in Frankfurt’s Gallus district. Surveillance videos show twelve police officers wearing bulletproof vests pushing through the narrow back entrance of the kiosk. In other videos, Sahan is seen against the wall with his hands up.

The 39-year-old has counted more than 150 uses in his kiosk and shisha bar since 2019. But the father of three children cannot explain why he is so targeted by the police. “Every time they were there, I asked: What am I doing wrong?” he says. According to research by ARD magazine monitor and the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (SZ) the reason is his last name, which is known to the police.

Great publicity

So-called clan crime is one of the most discussed crime areas in Germany: Politicians and the police fight the “criminal extended families” in a public manner, create situation reports, and have raids accompanied by cameras.

In 2021 there were 47 investigations against clans across Germany, most of which related to drug offences. However, clans are also associated with spectacular crimes, with robberies on money transporters, a poker tournament or the Berlin luxury department store KaDeWe. Members of an extended family in Berlin have apparently specialized in museum burglaries and six years ago one 100 kg gold coin from the Bode Museum stolen. Also for the disappearance of the jewels from the Green Vault in Dresden she will be held responsible.

Associated with clan crime

The Sahans have no connection to these crimes. But, as the research shows, the Hessian authorities treat them as a family, which they assign to so-called clan crime. Ismail Sahan’s relatives are said to have been involved in a stabbing and another attempted homicide, and from the police point of view there was an “urgent need for action”.

Since then, not only the police have turned up unusually often at Sahan’s. Official mail is piled up on his living room table: the police, the regulatory office, customs, the tax investigation, the health department, the building authority. Everyone was already there. His business is suffering under the controls, and regular customers are staying away. “They’re scared. They say the police don’t come without a reason,” says Sahan.

He doesn’t know exactly why the authorities control him to such an extraordinary extent. It has nothing to do with crime. Even when he lodges a complaint with the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office, he does not get a fruitful answer. The research also shows that there are no investigations by the public prosecutor against Ismail Sahan – apparently he just has the “wrong” last name.

Term “clan” controversial

The Federal Criminal Police Office describes clans as “informal social organizations” “which are determined by a common understanding of their members’ origins”. The term is controversial because it is not clear who even belongs to a clan and because the clans themselves are made up of many families, often not even related to each other, and only a tiny part of which is criminal.

Sahan’s case sounds like something out of a textbook on the so-called “Policy of 1,000 Pinpricks.” The North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of the Interior, Herbert Reul, coined the term. The needlesticks are low-threshold controls of businesses such as kiosks, shisha bars or hairdressers. Places allegedly linked to “Clan crime”.

Official actions even without concrete initial suspicion

As so-called joint actions, these are carried out jointly by authorities such as the public order office and the police, without a search warrant and without concrete initial suspicion. TV crews are often allowed to film how permits for slot machines or fire protection are checked or how visitors to shisha bars are asked for their IDs.

The police are apparently hoping to find weapons or drugs, but mostly minor offenses or a few kilograms of duty-unpaid tobacco remain. In NRW alone, a total of 2468 such control actions have been carried out since 2019.

“Then where is the limit?”

Experts like the Frankfurt professor of criminology Tobias Singelnstein see the controls critically: “I think it is problematic in various ways that in this apron area and in this breadth the ‘policy of 1000 pin pricks’ is being used.” There is a legal basis for the trade inspectorate to carry out these checks, says Singelnstein im Monitor-Interview. “And now, of course, you can ask yourself: Where is the limit then?”

In any case, the usefulness of this strategy for solving serious crimes is limited: “With these measures, you won’t find any organized crime,” says political scientist Mahmoud Jaraba from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Jaraba has conducted numerous interviews with family members of extended families who authorities attribute to clan crime. “These regular controls reinforce the generalization. Hookah bars are directly linked to crime and large families.”

Minister admits “side effects”.

Another problem: The “needle pricks” are not set very precisely. It is often enough to be related to criminal clan members across several corners. Or having the same last name. When asked about this discrimination and the side effects of the controls, Interior Minister Reul said in Monitor-Interview: “So what we do is not without side effects.” It also affects innocent people: “Control always means that they will also harass many people who are not guilty of anything.”

But where authorities take a very close look, they usually find what they are looking for. A number of administrative offenses were found at Ismail Sahan, such as noise pollution. On the day of the check-up, an employee’s vaccination card was missing, menus on the tables or Sahan had parked incorrectly. A preliminary investigation on suspicion of the provision of wages and violation of the illegal work law was discontinued due to minor guilt.

LKA justifies raids

And yet the State Criminal Police Office of Hesse responded to a request from monitor and the SZ, the controls in his shops are related to clan crime. The primary goal is to “lighten up criminal structures and consistently combat the threat to the citizens of Frankfurt.” However, “the focus is not on the entire family, but only on suspected relatives,” says the answer. Police action was also always presented transparently.

Ismail Sahan leaves this perplexed. He was “shocked,” he says, and “very sad.” He has never made himself punishable – so why does he have to endure the controls? “In a box of apples, there’s always a bad one,” he says. You have to remove it and not destroy the whole box at once.

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