Mannheim
Process after police control – officers in the dock
Flowers, candles and signs lie in Mannheim at the place where a man died after a police check in early May 2022. photo
© René Priebe/PR video /dpa
A man dies after a police operation in Mannheim. Many people are protesting against police violence with the survivors. The trial against the police officers shows that two reports could be decisive.
Inevitably, the image of George Floyd comes to mind. The man who was pushed to the ground by a police officer in the USA in May 2020 until he could no longer breathe and died. He is said to have shouted “I can’t breathe” before he lost consciousness. “I want a judge,” these are the clearly audible last words of another man two years after the Floyd case. Also his death in a police operation Mannheim caused a stir, protests, a political debate – and it has also been occupying the Mannheim regional court since Friday.
Two police officers are said to be responsible for the death of the mentally ill man at the beginning of May 2022. The 47-year-old collapsed during a violent operation by the two officers on Mannheim’s market square and died in hospital. The man with Croatian roots suffered from paranoid schizophrenia; he repeatedly had delusions and hallucinated. The public prosecutor’s office was convinced that his death was “foreseeable and avoidable” on the first of the eight planned days of the trial.
The older police officer remembers his momentous mission in great detail. He is currently suspended from duty and has to answer, among other things, for assault in office resulting in death.
Punched several times with his fist
During the operation, he said he wanted to protect himself primarily against attacks from the sick and aggressive man and struck several times with his fist, he said. He didn’t expect the man’s health complications; some rowdy onlookers also distracted him. “If I did something wrong, I want to answer for it,” he continued.
The case goes well beyond legal considerations. Political discussions following the operation included, among other things, whether the police are able to deal appropriately with mentally ill or suffering people. The momentous check also triggered a public debate about police violence, an initiative “May 2, 2022” was founded and a memorial procession was organized. In the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) had to answer critical questions from the opposition.
The moments of the Mannheim inspection are completely documented on video recordings. In the clips, which have been shared countless times on social media, and in the recordings from surveillance cameras, you can see how the future victim crosses the street, how one of the police officers grabs him and how the man breaks away before he is overpowered. The officer brings the man to the ground together with his colleague, he fixes the man lying on his stomach with his knee and hits him several times in the face. The overwhelmed man bleeds from his nose and remains on his stomach for a few minutes. One last movement and then he stops moving.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the man had previously visited his doctor at the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim because he had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia for years and his condition had worsened. However, he left again and his doctor could not persuade him to return. The worried doctor finally asked the two police officers for help because he was afraid that his patient was endangering himself.
Prosecutor: Pressure on the upper body
The public prosecutor’s office is convinced that the 137-pound man died because he was lying on the floor and could no longer breathe properly because of the pressure on his upper body and because he had a nosebleed.
In their view, the second police officer, a police chief charged with negligent homicide by omission, did not himself use unjustified force. But he didn’t put the man in a side position either. According to a preliminary assessment by forensic medicine, the death could have been avoided “with almost certainty,” it said. “The 47-year-old could then have breathed more freely.”
The defense, however, refers to a report it commissioned, according to which the 47-year-old died of cardiac arrest following circulatory failure. “The trial will be decided on the reports,” said the 27-year-old officer’s defense attorney with conviction. “The reports come to different conclusions and now it depends on which one the chamber follows.”