Interior Minister Thomas Strobl and the police union (GdP) in exchange
“During the massive riots on the fringes of an Eritrea event in Stuttgart, an angry, violent and armed mob injured 31 police officers – and this number may increase. Whoever attacks our policemen and policewomen who protect us, attacks us all, attacks the rule of law. We resolutely oppose this. We do not accept violence against our police without action. The protection of our forces against violence is a matter close to my heart for which we work hard,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Thomas Strobl on the occasion of the joint exchange with the GdP Federal Chairman, Jochen Kopelke, and the GdP Regional Chairman, Gundram Lottmann, yesterday evening (18 September 2023) in Stuttgart.
“My colleagues have done a professional job despite the immense workload. This exemplary commitment has come at a high price. Many of them have suffered injuries. Nevertheless, they have persevered and enforced the law. Now it is a matter of quickly assigning offence contributions to the crimes in order to obtain arrest warrants and to apply preventive measures such as custody, pre-trial detention and entry bans to the 228 arrests. Ringleaders and violent perpetrators must be removed from circulation as quickly as possible. I wish all those injured a speedy recovery,” said Gundram Lottmann, state chair of the GdP Baden-Württemberg.
Jochen Kopelke, the GdP’s national chair, echoed the wishes for a speedy recovery and emphasised: “In Baden-Württemberg, the authorities have been paying compensation to police officers injured in the line of duty for five years now. This is exemplary. The GdP Baden-Württemberg has fought long and hard for this. Here, they are campaigning for injured colleagues much more intensively than in the rest of the country. Yet this regulation should apply to all police forces nationwide.”
“In Baden-Württemberg, we are constantly improving the protection of our police officers. That is why we are not only talking about the use of body cams as in Berlin, we have introduced them to the police across the board. We are not arguing about tougher sentences, we already successfully campaigned at federal level in 2017 for an increase in the sentencing range for resisting law enforcement officers. We are also not just calling for speedy sentences or the payment of damages for pain and suffering, we are already doing them. admittedly, nothing is so good that it can’t be done even better. Protecting those who protect us is a permanent task. That is why we are currently working on the expansion of the compensation for pain and suffering in the case of offenders who are incapable of committing a crime or are not at fault. The state of Baden-Württemberg thus advances the compensation for pain and suffering and bears the risk of the tortfeasor’s inability to pay. In 2018, we already regulated the assumption of compensation for pain and suffering in Baden-Württemberg and were pioneers with the most civil servant-friendly arrangement nationwide at the time. We have already drafted a corresponding bill with which we will again expand the previous regulation and close a gap, and we are now coordinating this with the aim of submitting it to the cabinet,” said Interior Minister Thomas Strobl.
