The GdP is the largest German police union. It has over 200,000 members across Germany and is a member of the DGB. The GdP is more than one union, but a lobby organization for the interests of German cops.
Their political agenda is as dull and small-minded as one would expect from a police association: more money, more weapons, more powers to use force. Its representatives are busy giving interviews, appearing at congresses such as the European Police Congress and the German Security Conference, and listening to ministers and senior officials across the country. Not infrequently with success.
For example, the GdP has successfully campaigned for the introduction of bodycams, facial recognition, the mass use of pepper spray, emetic torture (it should be remembered at this point that it was Olaf Scholz who, as Senator of the Interior of Hamburg, introduced the use of emetics and thus contributed to the death of Achidi John in 2001), paragraph 114 of the Criminal Code and the annual ritualized expansion of the police apparatus.
The fact that the Berlin police have long had a budget of 2 billion euros and, with almost 19,000 cops, one of the highest cops density in all of Europe (705 police employees per 100,000 inhabitants – almost every hundredth Berliner is a cop!), does not prevent the GdP from staging itself as a victim every time there is a bang.
Where this leads was once again more than clear on New Year’s Eve: 4500 cops from all over Germany in action, bodycams, sniffer dogs, helicopters and over 100 “endangerment speeches” with “swimming pool suspects, migrantifa supporters and Middle East demo-goers”.
Behind the objective, technocratic façade, the GdP makes use of the methods of right-wing demagogy that one can expect from the racist thugs it represents, which are riddled with Nazi structures. In its publications, it uses the logic of right-wing demagogues, in which the poor and migrants appear exclusively as a security risk.
It should also be recalled, for example, that the police union provided legal and financial support to the murderers of Oury Jalloh for years. Not only did it consistently represent the narrative, which has since been refuted by expert opinions, that Oury Jalloh had set himself on fire while tied up on a fireproof mattress. In the trial against the head of the police station, it also paid the costs of the proceedings as well as the ridiculous fine of 10,800 euros for negligent homicide.
And in the recent past, too, it has become abundantly clear what deadly consequences the poorest in a society have to fear if politicians comply with the demands of police lobby associations such as the GdP.
For the ninth time in the past five years, a 26-year-old asylum seeker has died after being Tased in a so-called initial reception centre.
For years, the GdP has been prominently advocating the widespread use of so-called “distance electric impulse devices”. Their demand in Berlin that every patrol car should be equipped with a Taser fell on open ears last year when 1.4 million euros were made available from the so-called “Special Fund for Infrastructure of the Growing City and Sustainability Fund” for the purchase of 250 Tasers. The deadly consequences of this acquisition will become even more evident in the coming years, because with the potentially worsening living and housing situation, it is precisely those people who lose their homes and who are in financial crises, which are often associated with exceptional psychological situations, who are affected by deadly police violence.
So it makes sense for us to hold the police union accountable for its policies in a very practical way. That’s why in the night from February 4th to 5th we sprayed 2 cars of the GdP with slogans, smashed the windows and emptied fire extinguishers in the interior.
In absolute enmity with your right-wing lobby association,
against your openly right-wing and racist public relations
against your practical support for murderers
against your demands for more guns for cops
The whole world hates the police.
Source: de.indymedia
Via & translated by Abolition Media