Situation picture comes to 300 attacks
New Year’s Eve attacks in almost all federal states
01/18/2023 01:19 am
On New Year’s Eve there were almost 300 attacks on the police and fire brigade nationwide. A survey of the interior ministries shows that only in one federal state were there no attacks on emergency services. Berlin is the inglorious leader.
While the federal government’s official picture of the situation is a long time coming, there is a nationwide count for the first time around two weeks after the New Year’s Eve attacks on emergency services. According to a survey by the “Tagesspiegel” there were at least 282 attacks on the police and fire brigade across Germany. The newspaper reports with reference to the 16 interior ministries of the federal states.
The highest number of attacks was in Berlin. The police have now confirmed 102 cases here, 59 of which were reported attacks against police officers and 43 against fire brigades and rescue services. In Lower Saxony, the Ministry of the Interior confirmed attacks on 42 emergency services, and 42 emergency services were also injured on New Year’s Eve in North Rhine-Westphalia. According to the Ministry of the Interior, there were 34 attacks on emergency services in Bavaria. Hamburg also reported a relatively large number of attacks on New Year’s Eve with 19 attacks, the newspaper wrote.
In all other federal states there were single-digit attacks on emergency services: In Saxony, nine police officers were injured on New Year’s Eve, most of them, according to the Ministry of the Interior, without external influence from firecrackers. In Borna, where there were alleged riots that later turned out to be exaggerated, a police car was demolished. There were eight attacks on police officers in Schleswig-Holstein, six in Saxony-Anhalt, three in Rhineland-Palatinate, two each in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Bremen, and one policewoman was injured in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. A ministry spokeswoman from Saarland said: “In Saarland – even in previous years – there were neither “New Year’s Eve riots” nor comparable scenarios. No emergency services were attacked with firecrackers either.”
Hesse and Baden-Württemberg do not want to give any figures
Some federal states such as Hesse and Baden-Württemberg did not want to give numbers of attacks on emergency services, which is why the actual number of attacks is presumably higher. Because attacks were also reported in these federal states. In Hesse, for example, there were attacks on the police and fire brigade in Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden and Offenbach, according to police reports. There were also individual attacks in Kehl in Baden-Württemberg and in Mannheim.
The Saxon Interior Minister Armin Schuster told the “Tagesspiegel”: “The incidents from New Year’s Eve in Berlin should not be generalized nationwide.” Now a consistent prosecution and quick conviction of the perpetrators is important. “An assessment of the situation regarding perpetrators and their acts of violence currently seems more important to me than hasty discussions about a nationwide ban on firecrackers, because most people deal responsibly with fireworks at the turn of the year,” said the CDU politician.
The situation picture of the federal government is still pending. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said four days after New Year’s Eve that the riots had highlighted the problem of the failed integration of migrants. “We have a big problem in German cities with certain young men with a migration background who despise our state, commit acts of violence and are hardly reached with education and integration programs,” the SPD politician told the Funke newspapers. Faeser’s ministry announced a detailed record of what happened on New Year’s Eve – and the nationality of the suspects.