NCJ Number
69838
Date Published
1978
Length
311 pages
Annotation
A collection of newspaper articles documenting the ostensible brutal use of weapons by the West German police against the civilian population and laws used to justify police actions are presented.
Abstract
Since 1971, over 150 individuals have been shot or otherwise fatally wounded by police. The documents reproduced here are intended to demonstrate the alleged fascistic legal trends in West Germany and to discredit terrorist activities of the police. The practice of firing on private citizens began at the time of the manhunts for members of terrorist groups and ostensibly reached its peak with the Stammheim terrorist suicides. Brutal police behavior, however, has also been directed against ordinary criminals and even traffic offenders. From the leftist perspective represented in this publication, recent laws have permitted police use of military weapons and given a general legitimation for taking human life. The fatalities are described chronologically, with newspaper substantiation. A second section of articles and photographs clipped from newspapers illustrate illegal and brutal actions, characteristic of searches for terrorists but undertaken as well in arresting juveniles and women or in subduing demonstrators and strikers. In the final section, arguments justifying police weapons for self-defense and officers' rights to defend their own lives according to their conscience are claimed to be means of covering up the emergence of a capitalist police state modeled on Nazi Germany. The texts of laws which form the legal basis for police force and an alphabetical list of police victims are furnished. --in German.