Over the past week or two, if you browse through major German news sources.....lot of hype over assaults/fights...at German public pools.
I'll make five observations over this:
1. Most of what you see goes to male juveniles and young men. I've yet to see a case where a gang of women got into a tussle with another gang of women.
2. As much as you make the case for this being non-German young males....if you review newspapers where the stories are laid out....I'd say about a quarter of the problem-guys lead to Germans.
3. What the pool management folks don't want to be? Bouncers or internal security. Presently, they blow the whistle and try to suggest better behavior....but if things go beyond control? They call the local police unit. These days, it'll be at least two or three patrol vehicles that show up....figure four to six cops minimum.
4. What the police are suggesting? More or less....video cameras, and active banning of people. The pool management folks don't really want this job, and if they went this way....you'd have to hire more folks (meaning the cost of operations goes up, and ticket prices would have to escalate).
5. Why the stupid behavior? You could see this back in 2016 where they (the pool folks) started to put up 'reminders' over proper pool management. Some of this probably led back to marginally integrated 'new' residents, but in general....you could see 'macho' behavior being a norm in German society.
Where all of this leads to? I would imagine that a 'pool-pass' eventually will be created nationally, and if you did some really stupid stuff...you wouldn't get the pool-pass. Yes, and this would involve some type of database of 'pool-crimes' and 'pool-behavior' (as stupid as it sounds).
A massive problem? That's the funny part to the story. You can go to various parts of the Pfalz....finding 95-percent of pools never have such an issue. It's mostly in highly urbanized cities. In Berlin? I would imagine if you asked pool management folks about weekends, that they dismiss or throw-out ten young guys every weekend....as a minimum.
2 comments:
I don't swim at public pools, or, public urinals as I call them. Disgusting.
I watched some news piece (maybe 2005) and the German public pool maintenance guy was talking about the urine 'count'. After that point, I lost a lot of desire to hang out at pools.
Presently though...with the brawl business going up....it would seem to me to be like a NHL hockey game, with police action and fighting in the mix. I'd pay 10 Euro to watch something like this.
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