Shots from MP
After the death of 16-year-olds in Dortmund – investigations are ongoing
A 16-year-old was fatally injured in Dortmund by shots from a submachine gun. photo
© Markus Wüllner/ Video-Line TV /dpa
A 16-year-old was hit by five shots from a police submachine gun during a police operation in Dortmund and died. How does the investigation go in such a case?
If a crime is suspected by the police, the investigations are not carried out by colleagues in their own authority, but in another department “for reasons of neutrality”.
After the deadly submachine gun shots by an officer at a 16-year-old in Dortmund, there is a remarkable situation in North Rhine-Westphalia: At the same time, two police authorities are investigating cases in which the other authority was involved – i.e. “against each other”. The NRW Ministry of the Interior nevertheless considers a neutral investigation to be ensured.
How can a police authority investigate neutrally?
In the case of the youth who was killed in a police operation in Dortmund on Monday and was armed with a knife, the Recklinghausen police are responsible. The 29-year-old, who shot the youth six times with a submachine gun, is listed as a suspect. The Dortmund police are investigating, in turn, because of a case in the Recklinghausen area: a 39-year-old died there on Sunday after he was said to have rioted in an apartment and put up massive resistance and was arrested by the police. But there is also evidence that he was drugged.
When asked, the NRW Ministry of the Interior explained that criminal offenses against employees in the state service would be prosecuted in certain police headquarters, the main criminal offices. However, if the accused person works there himself, another criminal investigation department is responsible “for reasons of neutrality”. There are fixed partnerships here: Recklinghausen is always responsible for Dortmund and vice versa, the same applies to Cologne and Bonn or Duisburg and Düsseldorf.
When asked whether neutrality would not be endangered if mutual responsibility continued, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior emphasized that the investigations were being conducted exclusively under the direction of the competent public prosecutor’s office, which was “obligated to be objective, neutral and impartial”. The regulation also guarantees that police authorities never investigate employees of their own authority. “Overall, a neutral investigation is ensured in all cases,” it said.
The Dortmund case is far from clear
In the case of the 16-year-old who was killed, many questions remain unanswered: How is it possible that a threat or an attack with a knife is answered with several shots from a submachine gun? Regardless of the Dortmund case, Frank Schniedermeier, a member of the board of the NRW police union, said knife attacks were among the most dangerous attacks on police officers: “If arteries are hit, you bleed to death within a few minutes.” According to the LKA, there were more than 50 knife attacks on police officers in NRW in 2020.
Dangerous situations often developed within seconds, said Schniedermeier. It is therefore usually not possible to retreat and turn your back – after all, you would then no longer have the offender under control. Knife attacks must be repelled at a distance. Once a perpetrator is standing next to you, you have no chance, said the police unionist. In the event of an attack, you only have fractions of a second to make a decision. If there is still time, a warning shot should be fired – otherwise you would have to shoot in such a way that the opponent was “unable to attack”, explained Schniedermeier.
NRW police use MP5 submachine guns
Police in North Rhine-Westphalia use Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns. These are part of the equipment in all patrol cars. Schniedermeier said there are regular shooting training sessions with all the weapons used by the police.
According to statistics from Clemens Lorei, a professor specializing in the use of police firearms at the Hessian University for Public Management and Security, police officers in Germany used the weapon against people a total of 159 times in 2020. 49 of them were warning shots. That year, 15 people died as a result of police shots and 41 were injured. According to the Interior Ministry, three people died in NRW in 2021, four in 2020 and five in 2019.
A demonstration against police violence took place in Dortmund on Tuesday evening. The police said it was emotional but peaceful. Around 150 to 200, mostly young people, took part.