With all due respect, that is ridiculous. There have been dozens such cases over the last years, with little to no repercussions the police officers. Amnesty international has repeatedly criticised police violence in Germany. This is not a one-off problem.
Simply don't. Arguing that protestors should not enter the mine "because its dangerous" and beating them up to get them to stop entering doesn't make sense. This is similar to the recent Tweetstorm I read about a woman having a panic attack and the police shouting at her to calm down.
In this scenario the senior officers in charge should've known this would never work and ordered their men to stand down.
>Simply don't. Arguing that protestors should not enter the mine "because its dangerous" and beating them up to get them to stop entering doesn't make sense.
I'm not sure that makes sense either. The level of harm isn't nearly the same -- mines are notoriously life-threatening places. The degree of economic harm isn't nearly the same either.
I can see where you're coming from, but surely you can see how many might consider use of force justified, here.
To add to that, there is no independent agency in Germany that is tasked with investigating police misconduct. All cases are investigated by other policemen.
Exactly how were these policemen supposed to get these people to stop (or even attacking them since they were in the clear minority there), since they aren't using guns?
If you ask me? There is no way without proper preparation. It’s a wide area and it requires hundreds of policemen. So from this point of view, this is the usual “let’s put tape over the holes, and let’s hope the water doesn’t leak”. It’s like releasing software without testing it first, it can work....maybe not :)
So probably by hitting a bit they were trying to achieve fear so that people would not go further? No idea, for me what they did is not violent. At least that’s not how I define abuse of power, but maybe because I come from a country where policemen really do abuse power.
This policeman risks his job now. If it was in another country, I would laugh it off. Here in Germany this will become a national case.