Police officers are not always seen as friends and helpers. Escalations in operations and allegations of excessive violence repeatedly spark controversy.
If police officers use violence, it can be related to an operation as a last resort. But there are also repeated allegations after incidents in which the use of force appears excessive or even unprovoked. In August last year, for example, the case of a 16-year-old triggered a major public debate after the youth was shot by police officers with a submachine gun during an operation in Dortmund.
Do the police have a violence problem? And how is violence even to be defined? Police researcher Tobias Singelnstein has investigated some of these questions in his new book. The lawyer, who teaches and researches at Frankfurt’s Goethe University, spoke to those affected by police violence as well as to police officers, police officers and internal investigators who deal with the clarification of allegations of violence in their own ranks.
Researcher: Use violence “only exceptionally”
“The violence does not start with the shooting, but actually with simple acts of overpowering,” said Singelnstein of the German Press Agency. You have to be clear: “For people who are affected by this use of violence, it is always a relatively drastic experience – even if someone is only brought to the ground with simple physical violence and even if this is done lawfully.”
Although the police have a monopoly on the use of force due to their duties, the officials are only allowed to use force “only in exceptional cases,” said Singelnstein. “On the other hand, we see that there is a certain normalization of violence within the police because it is part of their everyday work.”
According to the book, the material collected indicates that deportations and control situations in so-called danger areas harbor an increased potential for conflict and the risk of police use of force.
At the same time, it is emphasized that the boundaries between appropriate and excessive police force are fluid and not always easy to draw, even if there are cases that can be clearly assessed.
Singelnstein and his team found out in their investigations that situations in which violence takes place are complex and often very dynamic. You know that from “normal” confrontations, in which one word results in another, or an action generates reactions.
Increased sensitivity to the topic
For citizens, the threshold of criminal liability is crossed relatively quickly – even passive attitudes during demonstrations and evictions, such as those in the Fechenheim Forest near Frankfurt at the beginning of the year, could be considered acts of resistance and lead to charges and criminal proceedings.
“There is no dramatic escalation in this area,” said Singelnstein on cases of police violence. “Compared to the demonstrations in the 1980s, for example, we are at a really completely different level of violence in clashes between citizens and the police. However, today we as a society are much more sensitive to signs of violence and there is also a different need for justification for police violence.”
Police union members see it similarly: There have been more investigations in their own area in recent years, says the managing director of the police union in Hesse, Alexander Glunz. However, the number of actual convictions remained low. “Of course we see the role model function of the police and therefore do not allow lawbreakers in our own ranks,” says Glunz.
Therefore, a complete clarification is required for every allegation. However, as Glunz goes on to say, it also shows that a large number of proceedings are discontinued because there is either innocence or insufficient suspicion.
Singelnstein complains that in Germany, unlike in other countries, there are no transparent statistical records of how often and in what form the police in Germany use violence or how often people die in the context of police operations. “Such a database, such a statistical recording would be an important first step.”
importance of communication
In addition, the laws do not explicitly say what “simple physical violence” police officers are allowed to do. “Currently, pain grips are being discussed very intensively and you can see that the different police forces in different countries have different lines,” says the scientist, giving an example. “Some say we don’t use any pain grips at all, others have adopted this very strongly in practice.”
But apart from legal rules and transparency: Communication is very important to prevent escalation and violence in the first place. “There are officials who are very good at it, who have very strong social skills to clarify and de-escalate such situations during operations,” says Singelnstein. “And there are people who just can’t do it that well – and then maybe it just doesn’t work that well in practice.”
The police researcher therefore believes that communication should play an even greater role in the training of police officers. “And it would be important to train the resilience to deal with a questioning of police practice by citizens in operational situations.” Because by no means all police officers would understand that citizens questioned their orders and wanted to discuss them first.