N-TV (Commercial German news), came up yesterday with a curious piece, involving the EU and German police.
There's a EU commission which drew up a recommendation and handed it to the Germans...saying they need to conduct a study....to see if German police are showing a racist tendency (meaning stopping and profiling people) because of racial differences, or 'external characteristics.
I paused over the term 'external characteristics'. I'm not sure what the journalist referred to....other than skin color, limp, or fashion statement.
The EU commission was awful careful. They didn't say they had evidence of any bad-boy stuff....just that if you did investigate the German police, you might find something.
Reaction? The Minister of the Interior (Seehofer, CSU)....kinda said in a blunt way....'no, thanks for the recommendation, but we won't go this direction'.
A problem to this? German police aren't usually attracted to calm peaceful old women walking their dogs in some park, and yanking on their chain to see if they have a dog license.
German police are generally attracted to unlicensed temp-stand guys who are 'hawking' items on a street without an apparent sales license.
German police are attracted to drug sales people on some German street, whose ethnic status doesn't really matter, but oddly enough.....the job has been mostly taken over by non-Germans.
The push by the EU commission? I suspect they want the Germans to stumble into this, find some 'sin' and then in public admit that a fair number of arrests or detentions revolve around either new immigrants to the country or guests floating through the country. The police will respond that 98-percent of the residents in some average town never spend an hour in detention in their entire life. Then you go down some drama where political parties bicker over fairness or unfairness.
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