Almost every day an attack against emergency services in southern Hesse

The Darmstadt Public Prosecutor’s Office and the South Hesse Police Headquarters are pooling personnel in order to process investigative proceedings on suspicion of resistance and assault on enforcement officers in a more targeted manner.

Despite the corona lockdown and the requirement to reduce social contacts to a minimum, violence against emergency services remains at a high level. Over the past three years, around 300 police officers have been victims of violent attacks every year in the area of ​​responsibility of the South Hesse police headquarters. According to the latest crime statistics, 294 police officers, 13 rescue workers and three firefighters were attacked in 2020.

Due to the large-scale standstill in public life, the slight decrease in cases by a tenth is “rather to be assessed as an increase,” says Police President Bernhard Lammel. The increasing and fundamentally observable disrespect and willingness to use violence against the police cannot be linked to influences such as alcohol consumption.

That is why the Darmstadt public prosecutor’s office and the police headquarters want to intensify their cooperation in dealing with the proceedings involving violence against emergency services. Since September 2020, the public prosecutor’s office has had a special department staffed with two public prosecutors dealing with investigations into suspected resistance and assault on law enforcement officers. In future, the prosecutors will work with officials from Central Commission 20 at Police Headquarters. In the course of a restructuring, similar criminal charges are to be bundled in a new subject area of ​​the commissioner’s office and processed by the investigators there.

Kerstin Reckewell, the head of the public prosecutor’s office, announced that the aim of the more intensive cooperation is not only the prosecution and consistent punishment of crimes against police officers, but also against public officials and employees at authorities and municipal institutions, such as social welfare offices and job centers, which are also increasingly hostile , Insults and physical attacks.

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