Police have to postpone focus work because of climate protests
“The question arises as to whether criminal offenses were violated”
“It doesn’t work that way,” says Ingo Bott about the actions of the self-proclaimed climate activists. “If human lives are endangered, then you can no longer explain it,” said the expert in criminal law. “The crimes that are in the room here already provide for prison sentences of several years.”
Since the beginning of this year, “climate activists” from different groups have blocked hundreds of streets in Berlin. At the request of WELT, the police have now published an exact list of how many working hours they have to put into processing the cases.
DDue to the use of the “Last Generation” blockade, the police have to put other tasks on the back burner. That is the conclusion of a request from WELT. Accordingly, as with other assembly situations, “lower priority tasks” would also have to be reduced or postponed. As an example, the authority cites “participation in operational concepts at hotspots” of the city or upcoming searches.
For the first time, the authority also provides a detailed overview of how closely it was involved in actions by the climate movement this year. According to this, between January 28 and March 17 of this year, the police worked 45,735 hours during blockades, 2,245 hours during a day of action by the climate and environmental movement on March 18, and 41,815 hours during blockades between June 18 and July 18 hours of action, 21,754 hours of action on “action days” between September 17th and September 20th and 20,136 hours of action on blockade actions between October 10th and October 20th.
The police have also set up the “Asphalt” investigative team at the state security agency responsible for politically motivated crimes for the criminal investigation of criminal proceedings in connection with actions by the “last generation”. The work of the investigative team is supported by all other departments of the State Criminal Police Office and the five police departments.
“On the one hand, colleagues were sent to the investigative team, on the other hand, certain process contingents are processed in the LKA departments or police departments until they are handed over to the public prosecutor’s office,” the authority said.
According to the Berlin Judicial Administration, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office has meanwhile been referred to around 730 cases (as of October 25th). In many cases, cases were connected because one person was involved in several actions. According to the information, 139 cases are currently open. So far there have been a few convictions of demonstrators to minor fines for coercion.
