In the obviously wrong house, a 40-year-old man from Munich tried to clear out a basement compartment early Monday evening. The man had already broken open the door and was searching the room when, around 7 p.m., a resident came by who wanted to look in his own basement. Unfortunately for the burglar, the resident of the house was police officer Andreas B. He initially suspected a neighbor in the basement, but became suspicious when he didn’t greet him as usual.
B. confronted the stranger, whereupon he first became aggressive and then tried to flee. However, he did not get far: in the nearby subway station Giselastrasse, he was arrested by a patrol car crew who had arrived. Thanks to Andreas B.’s intervention, the 40-year-old hadn’t captured anything. The man, who was already known to the police for various crimes, was nevertheless reported for attempting a particularly serious theft.
Meanwhile, the 34-year-old official received a lot of praise. “His behavior was exemplary,” said police spokesman Andreas Franken on Thursday. Because Andreas B. did not try to arrest the intruder on his own, but called his colleagues on the emergency number 110 on his cell phone so that they could come to his aid. “I was out and about privately in my jogging pants in my free time, I wasn’t recognizable as a police officer,” the officer reported: “In addition, I was alone and didn’t know whether the man was armed, whether he had a knife or something similar with him .” As he learned during his training, caught perpetrators react “either by fleeing or by attacking,” so he preferred to keep his distance and give the burglar a way out. There, however, he took up the pursuit.
When the prevented burglar noticed that the policeman was on his heels at a reasonable distance, he kept turning around and threatened to leave, reported B. He continued to hold back, but in the meantime gave his colleagues a description of the person on the phone , so that in the end it was easy to confront and arrest the fugitive in the subway station. “I wouldn’t have reacted and acted differently in uniform,” assures Andreas B. His advice to citizens who may also unexpectedly come face to face with a burglar: it’s better to let go first, but call the police as soon as possible.