A week after the nightly riots, the police showed massive presence in Stuttgart. The strategy worked and should now shape the whole summer.
The appearance of the Stuttgart police was ready for the stage: shortly before 9 p.m. on Saturday a twelve formation marched the short distance from the State Opera to the upper end of Eckensee at the New Palace. Six forces deployed to the left and the others to the right. The officers remained motionless in the midst of young people who were already celebrating vigorously.
The two police groups posted themselves on the square where the riot had occurred a week earlier. The state capital of Baden-Württemberg had been unexpectedly hit by violence, which is otherwise associated with Berlin or Hamburg. At the time, 19 police officers were injured, numerous shops along the pedestrian zone were looted, and more than 20 mostly very young, sometimes underage people were arrested.
The mayor didn’t have to repeat the chaos a week later Fritz Kuhn (Greens) and Home Secretary Thomas Strobl (CDU) promised. The call to be a cosmopolitan city is at stake, says Kuhn.
Police are regularly present
After a few minutes of motionlessness, the six formations suddenly disappeared from the Upper Castle Garden as they had appeared out of nowhere. The message to the celebrating audience was therefore clear: The police are fully deployed that night, even if you don’t always see them. This appearance by the police irritated the bystanders. But when the officers were out of sight, the party went on with a lot of alcohol.
However, the emergency services returned three quarters of an hour later in larger units and started systematically with personal checks. They not only asked to see their IDs, but also looked for knives and, above all, drugs in the pockets and on the body of those controlled. The week before, a screening of a 17-year-old shortly before midnight had caused several hundred young people to riot.
Almost routine for the police
Even before sunset, the police were already demonstrating what it was about: not only to nip riots in the bud, but to find perpetrators from the previous week and to do something to counter the rampant drug trade. Operations manager Carsten Höfler spoke at 11 p.m. of “a perfectly normal Saturday night in Stuttgart“Intensive personal checks at these locations, which are known for crime, were routine, he noted.
A few hundred police officers are also deployed, said Höfler. Emergency vehicles and police horses patrolled the pedestrian zone. He didn’t say how many forces had been dispatched to the city center. A week earlier, the number of emergency services had only doubled. The police then described this as a misjudgment.
Strategy should be maintained
Summer lasts for a few more weeks. The nightly meetings of young people will be repeated. The head of operations announced that he would continue to pursue the strategy that night. There are so many police officers in the Stuttgart region that presence will be ensured in the coming weekends.
Mayor Kuhn observed the situation from the New Palace. He was satisfied when a relatively quiet night loomed around 10:30 p.m. “Relief is the wrong word. We still have to get back to normal,” he said. As long as the police have to act with this strength, he believes the city is far from normal.
At around 2:30 a.m., a police spokeswoman reported two arrests related to the riot a week ago. “The situation is relatively quiet,” she said when the young people left the city center in large numbers. The police were busy elsewhere in the city that night. The outside areas of the reopened bars were as crowded as if the Corona spacing rules had never existed.
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