Police cauldron
The police cauldron (also including cordoning off or containment ) is a tactic in police operations that is used in demonstrations , elevators and other gatherings to control crowds. A dense ring of police officers is formed around the meeting and makes it impossible for the participants to leave the place, for example by applying direct force . The police kettle is legally a form of preventive detention and has been legally controversial in terms of proportionality and constitutionality since it was first used in Germany ( Hamburger Kessel 1986) .
Tactical basics
scope of application
Kettles are used against demonstrators who endanger public security through their behavior or who, according to the police leadership, will do so in the future. Boilers are particularly suitable to prevent street battles or to contain or prevent their further course. The police cauldron is also used as a preventive measure against demonstrations.
The police cauldron is usually not formed by the normal patrol police , but by deployed hundreds , as these units basically ensure protection during demonstrations and are trained and equipped for such a task.
Action
The police walk up to a group of people in a straight line and then begin to encircle them. Depending on the structural situation, a police cauldron can also be created by taking advantage of the terrain. Sometimes the enclosure is also done from several sides at the same time. When the police have managed that no one can escape from this encirclement, the cauldron is formed. Usually in the phase of the boiler formation, i.e. the transition period from encircling to the finished boiler, individual interferers are brought into the middle of the boiler with pressure.
An extended procedure is the so-called traveling boiler , which is mostly used with moving demonstration trains.
target
The goal of the encirclement is to restrict people's freedom of movement and thus prevent them from possible and further acts of violence against legal interests of the person or the general public. This can also prevent demonstration trains or similar gatherings of people from moving in certain directions.
After the containment, it may also be possible that some or all of the people are removed from the cauldron in order to determine their personal details or to keep them in custody (even after the cauldron has been closed) and bring them to the criminal prosecution .
history
The first use of the police cauldron in the open air took place in Germany in 1986 in Hamburg . This was preceded by two nationwide large-scale demonstrations that took place after the Chernobyl disaster in Germany on June 7, 1986, one against the Wackersdorf reprocessing plant under construction and one against the Brokdorf nuclear power plant under construction in Kleve, Schleswig-Holstein . Although both demonstrations were banned by the regulatory authorities, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against nuclear energy in both locations. There were massive clashes between demonstrators and police forces. In protest of the police measures, a protest demonstration took place the next day in Hamburg, which ended in the Hamburg cauldron , which was later judged to be illegal . The Hamburg cauldron was the trigger for the establishment of the "Hamburger Signal", an association of Hamburg police officers who spoke out publicly against this police operation. The Federal Working Group of Critical Police Officers emerged from the Hamburg Signal .
Legal
When making the boiler, the basic rights to physical integrity and freedom of movement are interfered with.
In terms of police tactics, shields and partial and complete encirclements are a simple and effective way of preventing acts of violence and also - for example, of maintaining order during football games and counter-demonstrations. Since the encircled, in addition to the withdrawn freedom of movement, are also deprived of very practical needs such as drinking water or toilet visits, the duration determines the legal weighting as well as public response. For example, the police cauldron , which lasted several hours, was very controversial at the G7 summit in Munich in 1992 . Massive and non-selective encirclement can also be viewed as disproportionate , as it can also affect non-interferers .
In the wake of police cauldrons, there are occasional legal proceedings. A frequently cited example is a police cauldron during a demonstration on a CASTOR transport that took place in 2001 . In 2005 the complaint of one of the parties involved was approved by the Federal Constitutional Court. She was encircled in the open field for two hours in the morning during a demonstration in Dannenberg, which was forbidden by a general decree, and then taken away by prisoner transport and remained in police custody until the early morning. The decision is and was not a prohibition of the boiler per se, but criticizes the circumstances of the police detention afterwards.
literature
- Michael Dissinger: Between commercialization and security. Social educational fan projects in the field of tension between interests. Diplomica-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8428-6871-7 , pp. 37-38, 43.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Philip Metzger: Bathing democracy in pepper spray. In: Jungle World . June 27, 2013, accessed January 10, 2014 .
- ↑ Birgit Kruse: Beatings the Bavarian way. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 6, 2007, accessed January 10, 2014 .
- ↑ Cauldron at the summit. In: Socialist newspaper . Website "Protest in Munich since 1945", August 13, 1992, accessed on January 10, 2013 .
- ↑ 20 years Münchner Kessel: Hinlangen is Bavarian style 20 years Münchner Kessel - "Hinlangen is Bavarian style" ( Memento from February 17th, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ BVerfG, 2 BvR 447/05 of December 13, 2005, paragraph no. (1 - 69)
