"It is assumed that whites do not commit crimes"

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Police control in Stuttgart

Of course, he used to do racial profiling, says Thomas Müller, detective chief detective, when asked today. For forty years Müller worked as a police officer in Bremen. At some point he realized that he checked people with a certain appearance particularly often. For some years now, Müller has been giving workshops for his former colleagues in which they learn how to make better controls - regardless of external characteristics.

SPIEGEL: Identity checks are part of the everyday work of police officers. Why do police officers need tuition in this?

Thomas Müller: In Bremen, as an integration officer, I had to deal with many people of color. You said: We experience police checks more often than our white fellow citizens. That's when I started dealing with this problem. Finally, I asked myself how I can work with cops on this. If you give a seminar and immediately call police officers racist, you will fail. I try to break open my colleagues.

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