Can a police officer crack xenophobic jokes in internal police chat groups or private messages? As bodyguard for the Israeli Consul General, is he allowed to write to his police spec that he would prefer to travel to Dachau instead of Auschwitz or Flossenbürg with his boss, because one would come home earlier – and the other replies: “But not the one who cleans the oven must.”
The suspended police officer Michael R. is said to have made racist, National Socialist and anti-Semitic statements in WhatsApp chats. Denigrated as a bodyguard who also guarded Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Israelite religious community. And police measures passed on to the more or less active footballers Jérôme Boateng and Stefan Effenberg.
“Trust has been irreparably destroyed,” said the representatives of the Munich police headquarters before the Munich administrative court. The Bureau wants to remove the 43-year-old R. from the service. His lawyer Michael Gimpel says that R. was just looking for a verbal outlet for his work, that he is in no way xenophobic, right-wing extremist or anti-Semitic. In the end, Chamber 19L ruled that R. was demoted by two levels to the position of detective; he remains a police officer.
“You’re not the first officer I’ve had to sit here with such things,” says the judge to R. and asks: “Did you actually hear anything about TKÜ in your training,” that is, telecommunications surveillance. She couldn’t understand that a police officer, of all people, was so inexperienced with the WhatsApp messenger service.
It’s about chats with his colleague Philipp D., who is no longer on the police force, and a chat group with seven other police officers. Corresponding videos, photos and text messages are said to have been exchanged there. Common letter combinations between Philipp D. and Michael R. were “HH” and “SH”, known in right-wing circles as “Heil Hitler” and “Sieg Heil”. R. assures that it was a “running gag” and means “Servus Homo” and “Hey ha”.
There were also voice messages in which R. imitated Hitler’s voice. “I would never do that again,” he says today. Or the chat with the colleague who, due to the Corona measures, said that a concentration camp could be opened again, which he commented with “Yes”. Or the pot holder with the Hitler emblem and the comment: “Grandma still knows what’s good.” But, as Michael R. complains, shreds are pulled out of the conversation and taken out of context. He just always “fucked along” and later distanced himself from his friend.
Once he urged moderation
In relation to Charlotte Knobloch, he is said to have written as her bodyguard: “I shit in front of her door, nice brown, with a little flag.” R. says today that it was connected to Ms. Knobloch’s dog, who had cancer at the time, which stank and had diarrhea when he had to go outside with it. He had let off steam, in the past you were allowed to have a beer in the office after the night shift, today you’re not even allowed to do that outside in the parking lot. You shouldn’t even use the term home these days.
In the chats with colleagues, an assignment at Boateng also appears, Effenberg’s alcohol drive, but the proceedings for breach of official secrecy were discontinued. The fact that R. told his aunt Fanny about her son’s drunk driving is also set. And then there were xenophobic chats with a lady R. had met on an online dating site. “I wanted to impress her and wrote it down,” he explains.
The judge credits R. with the fact that there were never any abnormalities on duty, that he cooperated and showed remorse. And that at least once in a group chat he asked his colleagues to be moderate. The personality profile created was positive and R. had not shown any involvement in an anti-constitutional organization.
Above all, one question is important to the court: Are the statements verbal lapses, or has Michael R. turned away from democratic principles? All criminal proceedings against him for incitement to hatred or the use of anti-constitutional symbols have been dropped.
But the police headquarters sees above all the political duty of loyalty to the police officer as violated. The disparaging chats in relation to the people to be protected are “the worst”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ make socially acceptable.
The path to the Bavarian Administrative Court is now open to the Executive Committee.