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Activists of the »Last Generation« in Berlin in November
Photo: FILIP SINGER / EPA
The protest actions of the "Last Generation" not only cost Berlin's commuters nerves, but also the police of the capital.
The Berlin police counted around 220,000 emergency service hours for police officers this year, most of which are likely to have arisen when removing the climate protection demonstrators from traffic routes to which they had stuck themselves with superglue.
That is an extreme effort, said the Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik of the dpa news agency: Observing neuralgic traffic junctions and buildings, detaching demonstrators who have been glued on, blocking off intersections and diverting traffic tie up a lot of manpower.
In addition, there is the working time for investigations, prosecution of criminal and administrative offenses and fine proceedings.
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In Berlin alone, according to the police, climate protection groups blocked roads around 276 times in 2022.
In addition, there were 42 other actions, some of which were criminal, by mid-December, Slowik said.
In total, there have already been 2,200 criminal charges and 600 fine notices.
In the second half of January 2022, the "last generation" had started their blockades.
The first wave of actions lasted until spring, there was a second wave in the summer and a third has been running since October.
The group is now also active in other cities and at airports.
The activists managed a spectacular protest action at the beginning of this Christmas week at the Brandenburg Gate: With the help of a specially organized lifting platform, they sawed off the top of the 15-metre-high Nordmann fir in the middle of Pariser Platz.
In mid-December, the public prosecutor's office in Neuruppin, Brandenburg, searched some of the apartments of activists because of "the initial suspicion of forming or supporting a criminal organization, disrupting public services, trespassing and coercion".
The background to the investigations was apparently several protest actions against the Brandenburg refinery PCK Schwedt in the spring of 2022. At that time, members of the group had repeatedly closed emergency valves on a crude oil pipeline that runs from Rostock to Schwedt.
On Twitter, they justified the actions with the slogan: "End the fossil madness."
bor/dpa
