new years eve
After attacks: fire brigade calls for cameras on vehicles
Firefighters at work on New Year’s Eve. photo
© David Young/dpa
Emergency services were attacked with pyrotechnics on the night of New Year’s Day. In order to be able to better document such attacks, the fire brigade union wants to have vehicles fitted with cameras.
As a consequence of the attacks on emergency services in Berlin and other cities on New Year’s Eve, the German fire brigade union is calling for emergency vehicles to be equipped with so-called dashcams. These are small cameras that are often mounted behind the windshield. In this way, such attacks could be better documented, said the Berlin-Brandenburg state association on Monday night.
The union also referred to body cams that are currently being tested. According to earlier information from the Berlin Interior Senate, the fire brigade and police in the capital have been equipped with 300 of these cameras. Dangerous situations are to be filmed with the devices.
In Berlin alone, 33 injured emergency services
“It is unimaginable what our emergency services had to experience on New Year’s Eve,” said state chairman Lars Wieg, according to the announcement. The fire brigade and police in Berlin counted a total of 33 injured emergency services on the night of New Year’s Day.
In response to the attacks, the Berlin police union, for example, demanded that a far-reaching ban on firecrackers be taken seriously. “You have to make it much more difficult for these people to act in the future. The fire brigade union said: “You will have to think very clearly about the next turn of the year.”
Tough action required
Before the turn of the year, the German Fire Brigade Association spoke out in favor of cracking down on attacks on emergency services. “We don’t need harsher penalties. I just want these penalties to be enforced,” said association president Karl-Heinz Banse of the German Press Agency. “It is unacceptable that our people are endangered, almost run over and afterwards it is presented as a petty crime.”