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. Continue reading “Berlin, Germany: Attack on Police Union Cars”