Police state security
Police state protection is the generic term for criminal police authorities whose main task is the prosecution and prevention of politically motivated crimes. Police state security departments exist in Germany at the levels of the regional police authorities, the state criminal police offices and the federal criminal police office . The police state protection is not to be confused with the constitution protection and unlike this no intelligence service .
activity
Police state security departments can be found in Germany at regional police authorities, the state criminal police offices and the Federal Criminal Police Office . The North Rhine-Westphalia police force, for example, has 16 police headquarters with state security services that are responsible for prosecuting all politically motivated crimes committed in their district. The agencies are particularly responsible for prosecuting the so-called real state security offenses from Sections 80-100a of the Criminal Code . In the case of such offenses, such as election fraud according to Section 107a of the Criminal Code, the political motivation for the offense already results from the crime itself. However, the police state security is also responsible for non-political offenses such as bodily harm if they are committed for political reasons. These offenses are referred to as bogus state security offenses . In the context of election campaigns, the police state security is therefore also regularly active because of damaged or destroyed election posters.
Since 2001, the state security services have been using a uniform “system of definitions of politically motivated crime ”. This is to ensure that the data of the different authorities are comparable. The police officer in charge of the crime must assign an offense to a phenomenon based on the criteria of the definition system and can select the categories “right”, “left”, “foreign ideology”, “religious ideology” and “not assignable”). In addition, he must state whether he classifies the act as extremist because it is directed against the free-democratic basic order . This division into politically motivated crime and extremist crime leads to a divergence between the annual statistics on politically motivated crime and the information in the constitution protection reports, because the constitution protection reports only list offenses classified as extremist.
The police state security is not an intelligence service and therefore not responsible for investigating extremist structures. This is the task of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is organizationally separated from the State Police. However, state security agencies sometimes have a contact person for the constitution protection authorities in order to be able to exchange ideas with them.
Individual evidence
- ^ Police state security. WDR, accessed on June 26, 2020 .
- ^ The tasks and organization of the police state security in North Rhine-Westphalia. Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on June 26, 2020 .
- ^ State security crime. Criminology Lexicon, accessed June 26, 2020 .
- ↑ Toralf Staud: Criminal and violent acts from the right: How are the official statistics created? Federal Agency for Civic Education, November 13, 2018, accessed on June 26, 2020 .
- ↑ Decree of the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia: Description of tasks for the organizational units of the police state security at the district police authorities designated as criminal headquarters of May 3, 2004, sub-item 8: Contact point for connections to the constitutional protection authorities and the intelligence services