Incidents on New Year’s Eve: the police and fire brigade are demanding consequences

Status: 01/02/2023 01:58 am

After numerous attacks on New Year’s Eve, representatives of the fire brigade and police see a need for action. They demand camera surveillance of their operations and a general ban on firecrackers.

As a consequence of the attacks on emergency services in Berlin and other cities on New Year’s Eve, the German fire brigade union is calling for emergency vehicles to be equipped with so-called dashcams. These are small cameras that are often mounted behind the windshield. In this way, such attacks could be better documented, said the Berlin-Brandenburg state association.

The union also referred to body cams that are currently being tested. According to earlier information from the Berlin Interior Senate, the fire brigade and police in the capital have been equipped with 300 of these cameras. Incidents are to be filmed with the devices. “It is unimaginable what our emergency services had to experience on New Year’s Eve,” said state chairman Lars Wieg, according to the announcement. The fire brigade and police in Berlin counted a total of 33 injured emergency services on the night of New Year’s Day.

Police union wants firecracker ban

In response to the attacks, the Berlin police union, for example, demanded that a far-reaching ban on firecrackers be taken seriously. “You have to make it much more difficult for these people to act in the future. The fire brigade union said: “You will have to think very clearly about the next turn of the year.”

Before the turn of the year, the German Fire Brigade Association spoke out in favor of cracking down on attacks on emergency services. “We don’t need harsher penalties. I just want these penalties to be enforced,” said association president Karl-Heinz Banse of the German Press Agency. “It is unacceptable that our people are endangered, almost run over and afterwards it is presented as a petty crime.”

Police union calls for an extensive ban on firecrackers in Berlin after attacks on the fire brigade and police

Jacqueline Piwon, RBB, daily news at 8:00 p.m., January 1st, 2023

Numerous accidents and crimes

After two years without fireworks, New Year’s Eve in Germany was overshadowed by serious accidents and crimes involving fireworks and attacks on emergency services. A 17-year-old in Leipzig was injured so badly when using pyrotechnics that he died in the hospital, the police said. As a reaction to attacks against emergency services around the turn of the year and to several serious firecracker accidents, a general ban on fireworks in the hands of private individuals is being discussed again.

The Berlin police reported massive attacks on emergency and rescue services on New Year’s Eve. The fire brigade and police counted a total of 33 injured emergency services in the capital. The fire brigade was surprised “by the mass and intensity of the attacks on our forces”. Among other things, beer crates and fire extinguishers were thrown at vehicles, rescuers were shot at with pyrotechnics while extinguishing and emergency vehicles were looted. Several people were seriously injured by pyrotechnics.

Union and FDP against general ban

Union and FDP politicians opposed a general ban on firecrackers. The behavior of criminals should not mean “that the many peaceful revelers should also be subject to a general ban on fireworks,” said the parliamentary manager of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei (CDU), the “Rheinische Post”. Municipalities could already ban fireworks in certain places and at certain times: “That’s reasonable.” The parliamentary director of the FDP parliamentary group, Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus, argued similarly in the same newspaper.

The domestic political spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Lars Castellucci, told the “Bild” newspaper that the violence should be condemned in the strongest terms: “I rely on the harshness of the rule of law.” SPD parliamentary group leader Dirk Wiese spoke out in favor of a ban on firecrackers in certain districts.

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