At the second turn of the year under pandemic conditions, it remained quiet in large parts of the country in the southwest. In their balance sheets for New Year’s Eve, the police and fire brigade usually speak of a calm course. “We were even more busy on some summer nights,” said a police spokesman on Saturday. In Stuttgart, however, those celebrating aggressively got into a conflict with the police.
In the state capital, according to a police spokesman, just before the turn of the year, more and more people flocked to the palace square. This was therefore temporarily closed. Young and aggressive men pushed at the barriers in the direction of the officers and some threw firecrackers at police officers, it said.
The officials therefore proceeded against the crowd with batons and pepper spray. A 16-year-old was provisionally arrested after a targeted firecracker throw. A total of five criminal charges and 60 administrative offenses had been recorded, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Stuttgart on Saturday. Four police officers were slightly injured as a result of acts of resistance or violent trauma. According to the police, there were no injuries among the partygoers.
Hundreds of people gathered in the city centers of Mannheim and Karlsruhe on New Year’s Eve, some of whom were informed by the police of compliance with the Corona rules. However, there were no major violations.
The police headquarters in the country recorded mainly minor operations such as damage to property and disturbances of the peace. The Reutlingen Presidium counted around 400 missions on New Year’s Eve, the police in Offenburg made around 260 emergency calls.
In Zell unter Aichelberg (Göppingen district), a 31-year-old was seriously injured by a gun exploding in his hand. In addition, an uninhabited house in the same place caught fire from a rocket. After it was extinguished by the fire brigade and later that night caught fire again for reasons unclear, the police recorded damage of 150,000 euros. People weren’t hurt.
In many parts of the country, however, the turn of the year was largely peaceful. The fire brigade in Freiburg spoke of a “calm New Year”. There were no operations at the fire department in Calw, as a spokesman announced on Saturday. According to the Ludwigsburg police, there were “very isolated cases of alcohol-related operations and disputes”. Every now and then there were hedge and bush fires due to fireworks, as the Heilbronn police announced. There were therefore no larger collections there.
The reason for the calm turn of the year may also have been the strict requirements of the state and numerous municipalities. Because of the continued high number of corona cases and the spreading omicron variant, a sale of fireworks was prohibited in the whole of the southwest. In addition, numerous municipalities had set up prohibited zones in which alcohol was not allowed to be drunk and fireworks were prohibited. Larger groups were also prevented from lingering in many places.
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