Pool Story

This is a story that is being told by several NW German news sites this morning, and there's a good basic story outline over at Focus, which describes this in detail.

So the basic story: there's a pool in Dusseldorf (the Dusseldorfer Rheinbad) which had to call for the cops yesterday....twice.

What's generally said is that a fair number of young men (identified as North African gentlemen), created a heated atmosphere, and disobeyed the pool 'chief' on numerous occasions.  The
chief had enough at some point, and called the cops.  The cops arrived and cleared the whole area.

At some point, the pool chief was threatened by the crowd, and that invoked the second visit by the cops to remove people.

Locals say that the facility had around 1,500 folks at the peak.

Folks arrested for criminal behavior and charged for insults and threats?  Yes.  These guys may not realize it, but in Germany....if you have someone in charge of something (an authority figure), and you insult them....that's an offense to land you in a court and requires legal help to avoid a fine.  By the threat business?  That's a serious charge and could land you in jail.

First time event?  No.  They've had a couple of experiences like this and it's gradually building up.

The chief problem is that you have an awful lot of young males who entered Germany and were basically given a 'pass-card' on mature behavior.  If you lacked it....no problem.  So here's this atmosphere existing where you can do some stupid things....act like 12-year-old kids, and pretend that no adult authority exists.  Locals look at this, and eventually get the idea that the public pool is a 'no-go' area (as silly as it sounds to suggest a pool could be this way), and they stop using it.

Eventually, enough complaints and whining will occur....that the city council or the state government there.....have to react, and make some really stringent rules or invoke some kind of 'pool-jail' situation.  I could easily see some list created by the summer of 2020, where you've done stupid behavior and gotten yourself barred from all public pools for an entire season....with people having to flash their ID and be name-checked before entry.

I know.....it sounds silly but that's about the only way to impress upon people some logical behavior.