Polizei gonna polizei.
As my friend who was stationed at Heidelberg would say, "Germans are not put off by the prospect of extra paperwork."
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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"Germany has been downgraded to the same level as Hungary for civic freedom in the annual Civicus report"
I hate people who share or create these clips. They never show the whole picture. Of course there are cases were children can be arrested...
Not saying that they never do anything wrong, but without full context this is just bait.
What about the old guy then? What did he do? I dont think calling a group of german cops "pigs" is illegal.
Section 185 Insult: The penalty for insult is imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or a fine and, if the insult is committed publicly, in a meeting, by disseminating content (section 11 (3)) or by means of an assault, imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine.
While I personally am unsure about the handling of that situation, I think police is legally able to justify the use of force in this situation by saying "Oh, the situation was difficult and we had to act now to ensure that we are able to identify the person." The woman who tried to "help" the man by intervening is legally also in trouble; if the police had the capacity and the will to act.
Funfact: Generally, you can call them "cows" in German so "Bulle", because it is so well established that it no longer counts as an insult but only as colloquial language.
Did you watch the video? Even with the insult statute it's clearly disproportionate! Insult is not an immediate threat..
Yes, I watched the video. From a police standpoint the amount of force is relatively low. Again, the likely legal justification for the action is that protest made identification impossible which allows them to separate the person from the protest to id him. Him falling was not intended. Injuries caused by resisting are legally speaking no harm done by police. They did not hit him; they could be allowed to if he resisted.
Anyway, I am trying to explain the legal side, but I am no lawyer. Just interested in law. You can try r/polizei to get a more "official" answer. I don't think there's a community for German police on reddit yet.
Imho: I would have let the man be as long as he doesn't get closer. It looks like he's carrying a beer and the trouble is not worth it for "pig". Police usually has room for not engaging if it helps keep protests civil. I think, this didn't go well - especially because the officer tried it alone at first.
In this thread a guy justifying morally reprehensible actions by declaring them legally justifiable :/
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All of them. But that doesn't define who I am today.
Who hurt you? If I may return the question.
Good response. The "who hurt you" thing is such a low ball argumentative style.
You get downvoted for clarification of law. Instead of the law itself being downvoted.
That's what happens these days :) to be fair I think my opinion that this clip doesn't show context and could therefore be misleading and that I hate people uploading these short clips because of that, was enough for people to make up their mind and just down vote everything. That's fine. People have strong opinions and I totally get it why pro-Palestine people are mad at Germany and the police after seeing this video. Not getting emotional while Israel commits genocide and everyone watches or supports would be abnormal.
I very much agree!
IMO, as a humankind we need next step in our collective evolution, so we can accept thru as it is and deal constructively with it. Formal school system needs to include education about how to develop emotional inteligencie and recognize manipulation.
Ok, sure. But we should also consider the possibility that in this particular video all context is already displayed: pro-Palestine demonstration. This is the sad reality of the current political trend.
the europeans seem to be going harder on fascism than the americans atm.
I dont know that I agree but I also dont want to participate in this competition in the first place. Maybe instead of measuring fascism vs fascism we agree that literally any fascism is too fucking much and fight every ounce of it collectively everywhere?
the fascism has been around for centuries by this point, but it was tolerated because it wasn't targeted at the privileged groups until now.
i suspect that once the privileged groups are out of the fascist crosshairs; fascism will go back to being tolerated again.
I disagree with what you are implying in the second sentence, but agree with the third. I don't believe that in general (so individuals might) the police acts more forceful against pro-Palestine demonstrators. However, I do agree that politically Germany is doing fuck all for Palestine.
Even without context as to what the kid did, the older guy did nothing wrong and still got taken.
The context is there's a genocide, and the German government is once again super into it
The original video I saw of this was a clip of only the cop assaulting the old man.
Then someone asked for context, and they posted this "full video"
So ironically you already have "context".
Unless I find a longer video, in which case the cycle continues.
That's fair. Context is of course always relative. In would say context is given if the starts at the first interaction of the person taken in custody with the police. Of course its difficult to find such high quality footage. Not sure if it is worth to point out but many police officers are in favor of bodycams. They cannot use them because they are against the law in Germany. If I find a video with more context, I will get back to you, but I am pretty bad at that.
That being said: There are definitely police officers out there that love going on demonstrations and smacking people. I personally know one who did this who lost his job as a police officer; not sure whether it was because of that or something else though.
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