Dortmund
Death of a 16-year-old: Police bodycams were not on
The youth who was shot is commemorated with candles and flowers. photo
© Gregor Bauernfeind/dpa
What exactly happened in the courtyard of a youth welfare facility in Dortmund? Five bullets from a police gun hit a 16-year-old, who died. The officers’ body cams were off.
In a deadly police operation in Dortmund, the body cameras of the officers involved were not switched on. The German press agency learned this from investigators. The “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” had previously reported. Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) has meanwhile informed state parliament politicians in a letter about the incident in Dortmund.
In case of doubt, the cameras on the police officers’ vests could have provided more information about the operation in which a 16-year-old Senegalese man was fatally injured by five bullets. According to investigators, the use of the Dortmund police was initially not suitable for a body cam – since the young person apparently wanted to kill himself with a knife. When the situation changed and the 16-year-old approached the police officers with the knife, the situation became so stressful for the officers within seconds that nobody thought of the bodycam.
The NRW Ministry of the Interior defended the decision of the officers involved not to turn on their body cams during the operation. A spokesman for the ministry told the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” that a service manual from the NRW police contained corresponding regulations for the use of bodycams. Accordingly, the filming of “highly personal circumstances” is not permitted. “The very personal decision to want to end his life and be “filmed” in the process could be subsumed under it,” said the spokesman for the newspaper.
reconstruction of events
The public prosecutor’s office in Dortmund and the uninvolved police in Recklinghausen are currently reconstructing what happened on Monday last week. According to the investigation so far, the 16-year-old approached the police with a knife despite the use of pepper spray and tasers. A police officer stationed for security had fired his submachine gun six times, five bullets hit the youth. He died.
Interior Minister Reul meanwhile replied to a letter from the deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Elisabeth Müller-Witt and briefly summarized the events in Dortmund in a letter that the dpa has received. A copy of the letter was sent to the heads of the other parliamentary groups.
In the letter, Reul summarized the details that were already known and emphasized the presumption of innocence that applies to the police officer with the submachine gun. The State Criminal Police Office is accompanying the investigations by the Recklinghausen homicide commission, which represents an “additional neutral investigative body”.
SPD politician Müller-Witt was not satisfied with Reul’s letter. There are still “many unanswered questions”. Reul said “not a word” about the body cams. Therefore, the state parliament will “of course have to continue to deal with this terrible case.”