‘Drunken’ party-goers clash with cops in Frankfurt
BERLIN: Violence erupted overnight in Frankfurt between police officers and youths who have been partying in a central city square on weekends, with bars and clubs shuttered to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
It was the latest outbreak of violence involving German police amid a national debate on bias and racial profiling in police ranks.
“The mood turned against us,” Frankfurt’s police chief, Gerhard Bereswill, said on Sunday at a news conference, adding that members of the crowd had fought with police officers. “Certain groups feel encouraged — above all when they have been drinking — to attack police.”
The violence in Frankfurt comes weeks after hundreds of young men clashed with police and vandalised dozens of stores in Stuttgart.
Coverage of US protests against police brutality and systemic racism has received widespread attention across Germany, encouraging immigrant groups to speak up against what they say are years of being stopped by officers at random, based solely on their appearance or skin colour.
Police in Germany have long been widely respected by a majority of the public but have come under sharper criticism and frequent attacks since the protests that have swept the US.
Asked what he thought was behind the violence, Mr Bereswill said several elements had come together, including an aggressive mood fuelled by alcohol, but also the public debate in Germany over racial profiling by police in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by an officer in Minneapolis in May.
At least some of the 39 people initially detained in the melee came from a “migrant background”, police said, without offering further details.
“The accusation of racial profiling that is very present in society right now,” he said, adding that the issue of police violence in the US “has spilled over to Germany and the German police are falsely being compared to the US police”.
“All of that came together and we feel that on the streets,” he said in an interview with Hessische Rundfunk public television.
Last week, Horst Seehofer, Germany’s top security official, rejected calls for his ministry to conduct a study into structural racism among the country’s police officers, insisting that he saw no indications among the federal force that racial profiling was a problem. Instead, he said his ministry would follow through on an investigation of extremism and racism in the public sector that had already been commissioned.
“For weeks, the police have been under strong criticism, and I would like to see us return to a fact-based discussion,” Mr Seehofer told the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. “To do this, we need an overview of extremism, antiSemitism and racism in the whole of the public sector.”
Opernplatz, the square outside Frankfurt’s opera house, where violence broke out overnight, has become the scene of regular weekend parties this summer, with thousands of people gathering around a fountain to socialise, drink and dance.
About 3,000 people were there on Saturday night, a racially mixed crowd of diverse ages and economic backgrounds.
The celebrations remained largely peaceful until about 3am local time on Sunday when a fight broke out among about two dozen revellers still in the square, Mr Bereswill said. When a group of 10 officers moved in to give first aid to an injured person, some in the crowd turned on them and began pelting them with bottles and glasses.
Others cheered as the glass flew, he said, and five officers were injured.
Frankfurt police said eight of the 39 people who were detained remained in custody on Sunday. Authorities in Frankfurt are investigating those eight, all ages 17-21, on suspicion of attacking officers and vandalising public property.