Migrants (or people who are classified as “non-German” due to their appearance) are victims of police violation of justice along with homeless people, prostitutes and leftists. Dark skinned asylum seekers in particular give reports of harassment, insults and violence from police officers and of being confronted by police officers almost daily.
Racially motivated violations carried out by police officers are wide-ranging. Admittedly public awareness of violation is reduced to a few single cases: These are marked both by massive physical violence as well as by unequivocal evidence and accredit large media attention. It is especially the few “police scandals” which receive public attention for example the “Hamburg Police Scandal” in 1994. Through this strained public examination of violations, which only takes into consideration the extreme exceptions of racial police violence and not the everyday forms, violation of justice seems to be an exception and the causes of violation could be looked for in the work of the single police officers. The normal everyday acts of violation which occur and, which for those affected are mostly motivated by racism, go unnoticed, are totally denied, or are played down as being exaggerated and is therefore these acts are smeared by the police force.
An apparant execution which was the trigger for the ‘Hamburg Police Scandal’ in 1994 thankfully seemed to be an exception. However those affected by violation report that, when they come into contact with the police, discriminatory insults are normally the rule rather than the exception. At the same time, in many cases, violation does not end in only insults, but ends with the victim being beaten and kicked in a dark corner (for example in a patrol car) or leads to the victim being held for hours in a police cell – sometimes it even leads to both.
It would be limiting to consider racially motivated police violence only outside the permitted practice of the police force. It is increasingly maintained that the powers and mission of the police force make racial practise possible or even take racial practise for granted. For those affected the means of independent police inspections in the frame of the so-called ‘veil search’ play an important role. Since the mid- 1990s the federal and nearly all of the state police have at their disposal; the power to hold a suspect without any concrete evidence, to ask for their identification and sometimes even to search the person. After the deconstruction of border control to Eastern Europe, the police force has a mission to fight against ‘illegal’ immigration as well as criminals who cross over the border. Because of this mission, the group of people who are affected by these measures are not arbitarily put together but are arrested by the police due to their appearance. Reality shows that there is a selection process according to the supposed ‘German’ and ‘non-German’ criteria and this, above all, is the vision of the police force.
The small amount of available data on the practice of the ‘veil search’ shows that this does not serve the fight against organised crime, as was previously thought: The ‘success rate’ seems to be adaptable because it is asylum seekers who have breeched the rules of their compulsory residence that are seized – meaning that they have breeched the constraints of being able to stay in a specific region. Furthermore these numbers show that the ‘veil search’ is about a means of inspection and of the observation of refugees and immigrants.
Both the high number of cases and also the extreme dimension of the violence show that it is about racially motivated police violence and not only about one single case. The form of violence – harassment, insults, physical violence – and especially extreme dimensions of violence – carrying out apparent executions and nearly beating the victim to death – are only explainable by the large deconstruction of the boundaries of restriction that police officers have. The causes for violation which can sometimes be explained by a police officer’s general readiness to use violence in society or by the officer’s individual characteristics are not durable in the face of the high number of cases of violation and the fact that this is carried out by collective means. However the institutional form of violation lets racism in the police force be explained structurally (by law, racially motivated police violence is promoted through the protection of the perpetrator by police officers and politicians up to the non-prosecution and non-sanctioning of violation). This explanation has to be built upon the inter-changable relationship between racism in the police force and people in German society. This inter-changable relationship is especially clear with regard to the debate about ‘foreign criminality’ and the fact that ethnically defined criminal organisations (‘Vietnam corp.’ and others) are singled out by the police commission.
In the course of the debate about the so-called ‘foreign criminals’ it is generally migrants who are perceived to have a high ‘criminal energy’ (whereby a traditionally existing prejudice against foreigners could be established in German society). This is supported by the increasing illegalisation and criminalisation of refugees and migrants. Refugees are more and more often being seen as ‘asylum deceivers’ and the aim, through the German Refugee and Migration Policy, is to make them illegal immigrants: As a result of the 3 country rule, fleeing and migration to Germany is nearly only possible by ‘illegal means’. In the majority of cases legal employment is also mostly impossible because of the lack of work permits.
In connection with the limiting Social Welfare Clause and the granting of material possessions instead of giving out cash, refugees are forced to end up with ‘illegal employment status.’ In a few cases, residency is even made illegal for the asylum seeker and they themself are also then made “illegal”. When an asylum seeker is classified as “illegal” it can lead to serious consequences and these consequences can only concern an “illegal” refugee, for example in a case where they violate their conditions of compulsory residence.
When their residency is made illegal it is nearly impossible for the refugees and immigrants to avoid punishment where their residency is an infringement of the law.
Similtaneously, in public debates, some criminal organisations are linked to certain groups of immigrants and therefore ethnised. The media and politicians speak about “Vietnamese cigarette smugglers”, “Polish car theives” and “African drug dealers” to name but a few examples. The special missions of the police force are formed according to this publically reproduced stereotype: Therefore, for example, they are of the impression that a ‘Vietnamese corp’ constantly fights for the “cigarette smugglers”. Racist stereotypes of “foreign criminals” are strengthened and brought back into public thought through, on the one hand, the existence and work of the special commission and, on the other hand, through police statistics on criminality, which links criminality to ethnic criteria.
The role of police statistics on criminality in particular should not be underestimated here. In these statistics, criminality is registered ‘objectively’ and is classified according to ethnic criteria, social backgrounds (minor crimes as a way to survive economically as opposed to embezzlement and corruption) and social benefits (insurance fraud as a popular sport) are not included. This then only presents a distorted picture of crime: Immigrants, because they come under increased observation and inspection by police officers, as well as having specific characteristics (for example breaching their regulations of residency) increasingly appear in police statistics, it is not because there is an increased “criminal energy” among “non-Germans” as opposed to “Germans” but is only because criminal statistics are inadequate and biased against immigrants. Despite all this, it frequently serves as evidence for the construction of the “foreign criminality”. To summarise: A stereotype creates its own statistics and the statistics reproduce the stereotype.
In order for this exchange between racism in the police force and racism in society and the government to become more than just a theory, we will take a better look at the the context of racially motivated police violence. The majority of violation is played out in the area of the fight against “foreign criminality”. The Anti-Racist Initiative (Antirassistische Initiative, ARI) Berlin, reports on the systematic violation of justice with different stages of escalation against people who look African and Arabic in the course of the “fight against drug crimes” on Berliner Breidtscheidplatz, which has been going on for a long time.
Similar testimonies come from other towns – for example mass arrests of over 60 dark skinned immigrants at Düsseldorf Central Station, who were then held for hours in police custody for “the establishment of particulars” – despite carrying identity papers. Especially through the actions of the police in Bavaria, the goals of the ‘veil search’ are exposed: The “selected searchers” search for specific types of criminality according to people’s ethnic background for example “quick break-ins by Romanian safe-breakers or a Polish group of car thieves”.
In conclusion it is important to hold on to the idea that many of the causes of racially motivated violation can be looked for not only in the perpetrator but also in the racial structure of society and government in general and, more specifically, in the police force. Racism is not simply carried into the police force by racist police officers but racism in the government and society is taken up by the police force and then reproduced and strengthened.
© Anti-Diskriminierungsbüro (ADB) Berlin e.V.
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