I often 'preach' on the fact that Germany is really a sixteen state federation....than it is one single nation.
The topic came up in the last week, and Deutsche Welle did a great job over this topic of when German police can draw and use weapons. If you asked a hundred Germans over this subject....you'd get a hundred responses.
In truth....there are sixteen responses, and it differs state by state in Germany.
In Bavaria or NRW (the two more populated states of Germany), the law given to the police is rather simple....you can ONLY 'render a person unable to attack or to escape'. Yes, aiming to kill the guy isn't the direction given in those two states.
Some states have the direction of a warning shot required, before you fire the first round at the guy.
Some states have wording to say that if in a crowd situation (like on a street)....NO rounds can be fired. Some have wording to say that if you warn the crowd (in some German version of 'duck'), then you can fire in the midst of a crowd.
The Federal Police, with the city-state of Berlin and the state of Schleswig-Holstein have a very non-wordy regulation in place about 'use of force'. There's supposed to be a sequence of events to occur, which lead to only one final outcome....either a surrender of the guy, or the use of force (a weapon).
One general thing that you notice about German police, an enormous of training takes places at the very beginning of their career, and occurs again through various phases of their career. They spend a fair amount of time yearly at firing ranges, and it's heavily stressed that the need to pull the gun....is always a last-resort situation.
You can review the yearly number numbers, and for a nation of 83-million....they almost never go beyond one-hundred rounds of ammo fired in active sequences of law enforcement. You can find various German police who admit over a 30-year career....maybe never fired more than a round in that entire 30 years.
So a national standard on police and weapons? NO. It differs state by state.
3 comments:
However, the standard of training is exceptional compared to the US. I feel sorry for the US police, as they're really thrown into the fire completely ill prepared.
There might be some police academies for state police that come close to the German standard. But once you start talking about deputy sheriffs, city police, etc...it's marginal. That's why they resort quickly to use of weapons if perceiving a threat. It'd be like some kid getting 3 hours of Microsoft training, then take the test to be MOS-certified and then offered a IT-position.
One can add this one woeful part of the US story....in urbanized regions, drug-usage (like meth, bath salts, PCP/Angel Dust)....makes your job ten times worse. The German police have not yet had to face this problem. A 140-lb woman on PCP can easily overwhelm a 200-lb guy. That side of the problem never gets brought up in the news much.
i agree with the above comment from SR .
when the german police start facing the same kind of lawless lowlife that american cops routinely deal with , they will have to meet deadly force with deadly force also .
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