The police and fire brigades in Berlin have made a desperate plea to citizens not to attack them during this year’s New Year’s Eve celebrations. The appeal comes following violent scenes on New Year’s Eve 2022 when mostly young men of migrant backgrounds directed fireworks at emergency services.
“Please respect our work. Give us enough space. And follow our instructions. Don’t attack us. Don’t shoot at us with firecrackers, rockets, or blank guns. You are liable to prosecution and could face several years in prison,” the police and fire brigade have warned in a joint video posted on social media platform X on Wednesday, December 27th.
Last year’s events caused a huge uproar: riots broke out across multiple cities, cars were set on fire, and 41 emergency service providers—police officers, firefighters, and ambulance workers—were injured. Police and firefighters responded to 3,943 incidents overall. As the newspaper Bild reported at the time, the violent incidents were “particularly bad attacks in the hotspot neighbourhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln with a high proportion of migrants.” Young men attacked firefighters who arrived to extinguish fires and fired projectiles at emergency services.
In Berlin alone, 145 people were arrested: 27 Afghans, 21 Syrians, and many German citizens with either Turkish, Lebanese, Tunisian, or Iraqi dual citizenship, conservative publication Junge Freiheit recently wrote, noting that the incidents had once again heated the debate on the failures of the German immigration system.
“Ever since the excessive violence last year in Berlin, but also in many places in the Ruhr district and even in the usually peaceful city of Bonn, we’ve known that something has gone wrong in our society. We must finally do something about it,” said Jochen Kopelke, head of the main German police union GdP.
Police are preparing a massive deployment of personnel to prevent the outbreaks of violence.
“It is the largest police operation on New Year’s Eve in recent decades,” Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik told the German press agency dpa. “On New Year’s Eve we will have 2,000 to 2,500 Berlin police officers and support from Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and the federal police,” she announced. In addition, there will be 500 federal police officers at train stations. The police will accompany emergency services in areas of Berlin where the strongest outbreak of violence took place a year ago—in neighbourhoods with a high proportion of migrants, like Neukölln.
Nevertheless, social democrat federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has voiced her worries with regards to the upcoming celebrations, because “there is generally a higher willingness to use violence” on New Year’s Eve than in the past. She warned that the ongoing Israel-Hamas war may also fuel tensions. As we reported, there has been a huge surge in antisemitic incidents in Germany in recent weeks, as well as in other countries with high populations of Muslim immigrants.
“We certainly assume that these emotions will be lived out on the street,” Berlin police chief Slowik said.
After the riots a year ago and in view of the “emotions running high on Berlin’s streets” in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7th, a change of course is necessary, according to centre-right CDU’s Berlin politician, Burkard Dregger. He has called for “anyone who publicly announces or calls for attacks on police, rescue workers, bystanders” to be taken into preventive custody. The same should apply to those who are found with weapons, tools, or other objects that are obviously intended for an attack on authorities, he added.
But other cities are also preparing for the worst. As Die Zeit reports, Hamburg is deploying a much larger number of police officers than in previous years. Firefighters and paramedics have received special training, and the fire brigade is running a public campaign to warn people not to commit violence against emergency services on New Year’s Eve. In the northern state of Lower Saxony, the police are preparing for a tough night of rioting. “Despite our efforts and preparations, we are unfortunately expecting attacks on the emergency services on New Year’s Eve,” the Ministry of the Interior said.
