The Camp Guard Story

It came up in Focus Magazine today (the German news magazine) a conversation with the VP of the union of Federal Police members.

The topic came to the discussion going on about German federal police being used as asylum/immigration center operations planned out by the CDU-SPD coalition.  The coalition group, led by Merkel....want a couple of federally-run centers in Germany, and there would be federal employees running them.  Naturally, the suggestion by the federal folks is that they'd have cops as security over the centers.

Well...the VP of the union (Jörg Radek) said in a public response via "Passauer Neue Presse"...no, this would not be a federal police job.  In simple terms....he even said: "We are not camp guards."

When you go and examine what regular German cops do....there's nothing in the past forty-odd years that would fit into this type of duty. 

This brings me to this entire topic of the federally-run immigration/asylum centers that are being discussed.  Both the CDU and SPD are desperate to give the public some hint or belief that they are acting and working on the security problem that people perceive.  To be honest though....there's just not been much of a thought process here.  A couple of political folks sitting around....some ideas thrown against the wall....some stick....some fail.  Beyond that, there are hundreds of issues which simply haven't been discussed at length.

The cops in this case?  I don't think they see this as a wise use of manpower, or see where the future of this whole program would end up. 

If you end up with three or four immigration centers, where people are sitting not for days or weeks, but for months and years....awaiting some judge's order, or some permission of a country to accept some failed applicant....this would turn easily into a hostile environment.  I can't see many cops wanting a forty-hour shift in that kind of situation.

If you have a few escapees.....you end up having some investigation into the leadership or security rules. 

If the centers do get built and opened....my guess is that it'll end being a private security company operating the security details for the first year or two.