Pictures of Hitler and swastikas have been circulating in police chats for years - and nobody opens their mouths. Not only the opposition sees a very fundamental problem behind this.
Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - Members of the state parliament see a lack of error culture in the state police behind the circulating of Hitler pictures and swastikas in chat groups. "The next scandal is here," said SPD domestic politician Sascha Binder on Thursday after a meeting of the state parliament's interior committee. Binder recognizes leadership failure and an authority problem on the part of Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU), whose integrity has been damaged. The domestic policy spokeswoman for the FDP parliamentary group, Julia Goll, criticized the lack of a policy of looking at the police.
The deputies were particularly shocked that the pictures of Hitler and swastikas circulated in the chat groups for four years and none of the 70 officials identified so far in these groups opened their mouths. Only coincidence brought the matter to the public. "It's worrying that nothing came out of its own accord," said Goll. Strobl always speaks of a zero-tolerance policy, but nobody in the police seems to know about it, criticized Binder. Green politician Oliver Hildenbrand called for an open and positive error culture in the police and disciplinary clemency for officials who reported such incidents. Thomas Blenke from the CDU called the events unacceptable.
A police officer is said to have spread pictures of Adolf Hitler and swastikas in various chat groups with at least 70 colleagues - now the authorities are investigating the man, among other things, on suspicion of sedition. Five other police officers are also under criminal investigation. Disciplinary action has been taken against the other officers who have so far been identified as participating in the chat groups.
According to the authorities, they confiscated the accused's mobile phones and checked about 6,000 chat groups - in 13 of these groups they found criminally relevant content. Around 70 officers from 10 police headquarters and police facilities in the country have so far been identified as participants in the chat groups. At the State Criminal Police Office, 22 officers are currently investigating the case, said LKA President Andreas Stenger after the committee meeting. A data volume of 600 gigabytes would be evaluated.
State police chief Stefanie Hinz promised Parliament a ruthless explanation. Hinz said after the committee meeting that they would also take a close look at the leadership. "It makes you a bit stunned." At the same time, Hinz did not give a concrete answer to the question of whether, from her point of view, these were other individual cases or a structural problem with the police. Each case is one too many, she said. But a lot has already been done with a view to the management and value culture - but that's just a process. "Where 35,000 people work, mistakes happen," she said.
The Greens, however, are calling for legal innovations as a result of the scandal. Domestic politician Hildenbrand advocates a regulation on so-called active repentance in the state disciplinary law. Hildenbrand said that anyone who reports such inhuman chat content should be able to expect leniency when it comes to prosecution. This can strengthen a positive error culture. In addition, the Greens MP calls for a distinction from National Socialism to be included in the official oath that police officers have to swear.
Hinz was basically open to it. One would not close such proposals, she said. But the main thing is that the values are lived in the police force.
A similar case involving a training class caused a stir in the southwest in 2020. At the police academy in Lahr in the Ortenau district, young people are said to have exchanged right-wing extremist ideas in a closed WhatsApp group. The public prosecutor's investigations into the seven police trainees were dropped because no criminal behavior could be proven.
