Saxony-Anhalt's Minister of the Interior Holger Stahlknecht (CDU) likes to be gripping and assertive, as one who does not leave the police under his command when it gets stormy. So he presented himself at the press conference after the attack of Halle. Demonstratively, he presented himself to the police and praised the use of the officials.
But research by SPIEGEL TV suggests that when using in Halle, not everything went so well, as the Interior Minister likes to tell. A police internal paper suggests: Apparently, on the day of the attack, for example, too few patrol cars in Halle in use.
Where and when were the patrol cars used?
At the press conference after the attack, the department head for security and order Christiane Bergmann reported on the course of the police operation. Thus, at 12:20, sixteen minutes after the police were informed, there were only four patrol cars at the two crime scenes. Overall, according to department manager Bergmann on the PK, seven radio patrol cars of the police station Halle should have been used at some point. But when and where exactly were the other three patrol cars on the day of the attack? From which area did they come?
To date, there are no answers to these open points. The Ministry does not respond to concrete demands.
The silence of the Ministry could also be related to the fact that there are too few patrol cars in Halle. It is especially important in so-called prioritized situations of category 1 - which also includes attacks such as those on 9 October - eminently important to have enough forces available.
Is the "minimum strength" complied with at all?
The number of radio patrol cars available per shift is regulated in a police internal paper under the heading "Organizational Development of the State Police of Saxony-Anhalt". Signed is the order of 7.1.2015 by the current department head Bergmann, who was then police chief. Under point 5 it states that the "minimum strength per department" for the police station Halle is ten patrol cars. So on the day of the attack, three patrol cars were not available at all.
The fact that the police Saxony-Anhalt apparently its own specifications for the occupation of patrol cars does not comply regularly, shows the so-called "stripe area index", which can be retrieved via the police-internal software ELDIS. For example, the index for the entire month of August for the North Police Department shows that at no time were all the radio crews deployed. In the state capital Magdeburg, the monthly average was only 77.8%. The figures for Halle did not want to inform the Ministry of the Interior.
(Also read: "Examination of the hall assassin - The anti-Semitic madness of Stephan Balliet")
Sending message: More about the police work in the case of Halle on Monday evening in SPIEGEL TV at 23:25 on RTL.
