DHessian Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) will inform the state parliament’s interior committee next week about a controversial incident that took place more than two years ago in front of the Idstein police station. The reason for this is now videos that have surfaced, showing how four officers use violence against a then thirty-eight-year-old martial arts trainer.
His father had a blood sample taken at the police station after a traffic accident. According to the police report from September 2020, his son was extremely aggressive when entering the police building. He pushed an officer aside and tried to hit a policewoman.
Three colleagues prevented this by taking the man outside. When he tried to take pepper spray from an officer, they took him to the ground and handcuffed him, police said. By shouting that he couldn’t breathe, the man was trying to “win over the public”.
As the FAZ reported at the time, according to the police, two officers and the thirty-eight-year-old were slightly injured in the fight. He was treated by a paramedic, but refused further treatment. The incident, which was watched by bystanders, sparked a legal battle that has dragged on to this day because surveillance footage of the incident was overwritten with new footage.
It took a lot of effort to restore the recordings
This will happen automatically after a few weeks, said the spokesman for the West Hesse police headquarters on Thursday. In this disputed case, however, an official had the express instruction to prevent the deletion. When he wanted to do it, it was already too late. The spokesman for the authorities recalled that the omission, which the then police chief Stefan Müller described as “very annoying”, had been “acknowledged under disciplinary law”. The restoration of the recordings was only successful after several companies had dealt with it.
The reconstructed images show four officers struggling to hold the thirty-eight-year-old squirming on the ground for a total of about four minutes. One of the officers hits him in the head once with his fist and once with the palm of his hand. After that, a few more minutes passed before the police finally managed to first tie up the fit man and then put handcuffs on him.
“We feel that the video puts us in the right position,” said the arrested man’s lawyer, Michael Heuchemer, in an interview with the FAZ on Thursday. Because the “initial provocations” claimed by the police officers cannot be seen. The recordings confirmed his client’s statement that he had not pushed anyone and had not tried to take the pepper spray from an officer. Incidentally, the officials’ memoirs in the investigation files are vague and incomplete.
On Wednesday, the “Frankfurter Rundschau” first reported on the recordings of the surveillance cameras in Idstein, which are also freely available on the Internet (youtube.com/@deliverfree). The left faction in the Hessian state parliament was “appalled, but not surprised”. The FDP expressed its bewilderment. The Greens described the reporting as “deeply worrying”.
Investigations against three officers dropped
On Wednesday, however, it did not yet contain the information that was added on Thursday and confirmed to the FAZ by the public prosecutor. Thereafter, the judicial authority discontinued its investigation into suspected bodily harm in the office after viewing the video in November in three cases “due to a lack of sufficient suspicion to be assumed”. The public prosecutor’s office did not provide any information on the proceedings against the police officer who hit the thirty-eight-year-old. According to its own statements, Heuchemer is taking legal action against the termination of the proceedings in the three cases.
Criminal proceedings are pending against his client for resisting law enforcement officials. The police headquarters said they reacted to this with direct coercion through physical violence. Its President Peter Paschek emphasized that he takes every allegation that police officers have misbehaved very seriously. The presumption of innocence also applies to police officers. As bearers of the state monopoly on the use of force, they are entitled to use physical force.
“Such situations never look nice, even if they are necessary, lawful and unavoidable in the respective case.” These are also difficult and challenging moments for the officials, but they are part of the job profile. If there is an allegation of the inappropriate use of force, there must be objective and comprehensive investigations by internal agencies and the public prosecutor’s office. However, the officials should expect an objective and non-judgmental assessment from the public.
Paschek announced that the police headquarters would check after the criminal proceedings, which were still ongoing, whether there had been misconduct that required disciplinary action.
