Beatings on man on the ground: investigation closed

Created: 05/20/2022Updated: 05/20/2022, 12:45 p.m

A sign reading 'Police' hangs at a police headquarters.

© Roland Weihrauch/dpa/Symbolbild

Even with six punches, the police officers had not broken the man's resistance: The investigators describe in detail their findings on a police operation in Pforzheim, which witnesses filmed around seven months ago.

The final report is now available.

Pforzheim - After an alleged case of police violence during an operation in Pforzheim at the end of October, the investigations against four officers have been discontinued.

The police headquarters in Stuttgart and the Pforzheim public prosecutor's office announced on Friday that there was insufficient suspicion.

It is true that hits to the head or to the body are also fundamentally punishable bodily harm if they are committed by police officers.

However, since there were no other indications, the investigators assumed in favor of the police officers that their actions were lawful and therefore not punishable.

This includes both the fact that two officers hit the 25-year-old lying on the ground and that two colleagues fixed him while he was doing it.

In police jargon, this is called the use of direct coercion.

The case made headlines in the fall because video footage of it was circulating.

Internet users have expressed criticism of what they consider to be the disproportionately harsh actions of the police.

The 25-year-old suffered minor injuries, police said.

He, in turn, injured an officer so badly that he had to stop working.

According to the information, the background to the operation was that the police officers wanted to take the drunk and aggressive 25-year-old into custody because he is said to have harassed other people.

He vehemently resisted that.

There was a risk that he would grab an officer's service weapon.

In the scramble, an officer "punched the man on the head for lack of alternatives to break the resistance and avert the danger."

Neither the evaluation of the video sequences nor the testimonies of witnesses would have refuted the police officers' representation.

The 25-year-old himself stated that he could no longer remember the event in question due to his considerable alcohol consumption.

The Stuttgart Presidium had taken over the investigation in order to maintain neutrality.

Such procedures are very often discontinued.

According to the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior, between 2017 and the end of April this year there were 2,166 criminal charges against police officers for allegations of police violence.

During the same period, 18 police officers were finally convicted or subject to disciplinary proceedings for unjustified use of force.

A spokesman said criminal charges had failed 25 times because the accused could not be identified.

From the point of view of experts, however, it is important to make the cases public.

The number of unreported cases was high, said the Karlsruhe lawyer David Schneider-Addae-Mensah, who has represented victims of police violence several times, at the end of October.

It would be an advantage if there were video recordings of the crimes.

Only then would they become public.

At the beginning of this month, a 47-year-old died in the hospital after a police check in downtown Mannheim.

Here, too, the officers had used coercion.

Videos were also circulating to show the operation.

An officer can be seen hitting the head of a man on the ground.

The State Criminal Police Office of Baden-Württemberg is investigating in this case.

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Shortly thereafter, a man died in Pforzheim.

According to the investigators, his partner had suspected that the intervention of officers four days earlier at a police station was the cause of the injuries.

According to the preliminary autopsy result, the 46-year-old died on the night of May 4 of respiratory failure due to pneumonia, possibly in combination with sepsis.

There was no causal connection between a fall in the entrance area of ​​the infirmary and the death, it was said later.

dpa