With a large-scale deployment of dozen, partly heavily armed forces, the police had to protect their own inspection in Miesbach in Upper Bavaria on Tuesday. The office had been literally besieged by numerous members of an extended family.
Previously, a 22-year-old man from this family had to spend the night on the police station because the officers had arrested him on suspicion of sexual abuse. According to the police, the victim of this act is a preschool-age child who also belongs to the family.
According to a police spokesman, uninvolved witnesses reported possible abuse in a public toilet in nearby Hausham on Monday evening. The large traveling family, who, according to the police, come from Romania and do not have a permanent residence in Germany, have apparently stopped in the place for a long time.
After police officers picked up the child and his mother in Hausham on Tuesday morning to question them about the events of the previous day, around 25 family members came to the Miesbach inspection during the morning and, according to the police, increasingly aggressively demanded the release of the 22-year-old. Among other things, they threw stones and shoes and tried to force their way into the building.
Numerous officials from all the surrounding inspections, the criminal police, the federal police and support forces from Munich were ordered to Miesbach. The officers were forced to defend themselves and the inspection with pepper spray and batons; a police officer was injured by a punch.
Volksfestplatz becomes an extended guard
A total of 135 police officers pushed the extended family to the nearby Miesbacher Volksfestplatz around noon. There, the besiegers, who were now surrounded, were picked out individually in order to determine their personal details and to have them examined by a doctor because of the use of baton and the pepper spray. For this purpose, the police, according to their own statements, set up a “processing line” at which the Red Cross also took over a station. The area around the inspection and the Volksfestplatz was closed to traffic for a long time, until noon a police helicopter circled over the city.
In the afternoon, the police counted two slightly injured officers and three slightly injured besiegers, according to which one of them had to be stitched to the head. The door of the Miesbach inspection showed greater damage after several people tried to pull it off its hinges by force. According to their own account, the police identified four ringleaders among the family members by late afternoon, whom the public prosecutor will now take care of.
The allegations include breach of the peace, resistance to law enforcement officers and dangerous bodily harm. In the afternoon, the police brought the 22-year-olds arrested the previous day before the investigating judge, who issued an arrest warrant against him.