Police officers as AfD members? From the perspective of the new police commissioner Grötsch, a “highly problematic” combination. Ways of thinking that are right-wing extremist or racist have no place in the ranks of the police.
The police commissioner Uli Grötsch, recently elected by the Bundestag, is critical of the membership of police officers in the AfD. The SPD politician also called for the vigilance of emergency services against right-wing extremism to be heightened.
In an interview with the editorial network Germany, Grötsch emphasized: “I think it is highly problematic if police employees are members of the AfD or support the party in other ways.” The party has become “extremely radicalized” in recent months, warned the former police officer and added:
History teaches us that it is devastating when the police and justice system are infiltrated by enemies of the free, democratic basic order.
No space for Right-wing extremism and racism
From Grötsch’s point of view, police forces need to be made more aware, especially when dealing with right-wing extremism. “They have to recognize when right-wing extremists are trying to foist messages on them. They have to know why they do it. And they have to be able to deal with it,” emphasized Grötsch. These are skills that “everyone who works for the police in Germany must have.”
The police commissioner told the newspaper “taz” that “we live in a time in which enemies of democracy specifically send messages to the police in order to destabilize them.” From now on, it will be his job to counteract this.
According to the SPD politician, right-wing extremist views have no place in the police ranks. Grötsch was referring to cases in which chats had become known in which police forces shared anti-Semitic content, among other things. Cases of such right-wing extremist chat groups had become public in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, for example.
But racism is also a problem in the police. Grötsch presented the results of the most recent Police study at. 15 to 20 percent of the employees surveyed said they were “chauvinistic” during the survey and almost one in three of the participants said they were “derogatory toward asylum seekers.”
First of all, build trust
Grötsch was elected police commissioner by a majority of members of the Bundestag on Thursday. The office is intended to serve as an independent contact point outside of the federal government’s official structures. Grötsch should be the contact person for police officers as well as for citizens who can turn to him if they suspect structural grievances in the police authorities.
Grötsch was trained as a police officer himself and was employed, among other things, by the riot police and the border police. One of his first tasks in the new office will be to gain trust, said Grötsch. Because not everyone in the police sees his new position as positive. But Grötsch is convinced: “Once the employees see how the police commissioner works and acts, then the mistrust will quickly diminish.”