Attack on a Police Station in Leipzig, Germany

ATTACK!

From Athens IndymediaVia Abolition Media

translated by Nae Midion

Full title: “Fire for the Enemies of Freedom” – Attack on a Police Station in Leipzig, Germany

We attacked the police station on Weißenfelser Straße with fire during the night of 15.03.23, the International Day against the Police and their Violence. Our incendiary devices hit the patrol cars parked in the yard.

We remember the 36-year-old who was shot by cops in his apartment in Leipzig-Paunsdorf on 7.9.2022. And we remember Johnson who was murdered at the age of 38 on 3.1.2023 in custody of the Braunschweig police. Relatives reported that Johnson was beaten before his death and his body showed signs of physical abuse.

The police remain a legitimate target of attack. Every day, they put the prevailing relations of exploitation and oppression into practice with inhuman violence.

In the so-called “no-weapons zone” that has existed since 2018 in the area around Eisenbahnstrasse in East Leipzig, the cops have the authority to carry out checks and searches on people without any suspicion. They harass and humiliate with racial profiling and racially motivated controls, which primarily affect BiPoc, migrants and other marginalized people.

According to the Saxon Minister of the Interior Schuster, the gun ban zone should not be lifted until there is a new police station. This is planned at the corner of Eisenbahnstrasse and Herrmann-Liebmann-Strasse at the latest in the middle of 2023 for the cops and public order office. This must be prevented!

Likewise in Leipzig more police are being trained. Considerations to gradually close the technical schools in Leipzig and Chemnitz and to concentrate the training in Schneeberg have been off the table since last December.

In addition, the “Interception Center East” on the premises of the riot police on Dübener Landstraße is scheduled to start operations in 2024. The “Joint Competence and Service Center in the Field of Police Telecommunications Surveillance” (GKDZ) is a joint data center of the police forces of the states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Brandenburg and Berlin. The state police forces are to be able to make inquiries there, and the GKDZ will then request the data from the telecommunications companies and forward it. According to press reports, the conversion work has been completed, but now there are supply bottlenecks for the necessary hardware. Currently, the Internet is still looking for Administrator Speichertechnik (f/m/d). The project is expected to cost a total of around 70 million euros, but the budget has been classified since 2019

Across the street from the standby cops, the new North Police Station is being built, where 250 cops will work from the end of the year.

The police force in Saxony is also being upgraded: Over a period of two years, new helicopters, service vehicles and IT forensics will be installed at a cost of €120 million, along with 2200 new rifles. The LKA Dresden is getting a new laboratory building for 60 million. According to the cops, Saxony is “already doing well to very well” compared to the rest of Germany.

In addition, the state is increasing its use of facial recognition specialists (super-recognizers). Following a pilot project in Chemnitz, cops in Leipzig and Dresden are now to be tested for their ability to memorize and recognize faces. According to the cops, they will be able to detect people from a crowd either live or in retrospect on videotapes, even if they are half-covered or masked.

Cops organize themselves nationwide in right-wing networks and chat groups. In addition to racism, a key element of right-wing ideology is misogyny, which is deeply rooted in the patriarchal structures of society. An internal commission that evaluated chat messages from the Frankfurt police station in 2021 found “eliminatory misogyny combined with violent sexual perversions.” But all other aspects of group-based misanthropy, such as contempt against people with disabilities or the homeless, are also repeatedly visible.

In recent years, there have been many reports on the machinations of the NSU 2.0, which sent death threats and rape fantasies to mainly migrant FLINTA*. An example of this is the lawyer Seda Başay-Yıldız, who represented the family of the first NSU murder victim Enver Şimşek as a joint plaintiff in the NSU trial.

In 2018, several computer searches were made on her person at the Frankfurt police station. Her private address was only accessible there; in addition, the names and dates of birth of her husband, her parents and her daughter were queried.

A few hours later, the first fax was sent to her office, threatening her and her daughter with death and making racist insults. The second fax a few months later referred to the suspension of some Frankfurt cops. Police inquiries about the NSU 2.0 victims were made in several cities, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Wiesbaden, etc. It is obvious that their data circulate in police and Nazi circles, the boundaries are fluid.

Sexualized violence is regularly used by police as a means of intimidation and humiliation. Cops themselves commit sexualized assaults and rapes, they humiliate and insult in a sexist manner. They can almost always count on impunity for their violence, as it cements the patriarchal order and the cis-male monopoly on violence. There are countless cases of sexist police violence, though the bulk of the assaults remain invisible. They mostly affect BiPoc and LGBTIQ+, people who face the most discrimination anyway.

For victims of sexualized violence who want to file a report in this context, contact with the police can be retraumatizing. The reactions range from not taking them seriously, insulting them, laughing at them, downplaying them, blaming them, sending them away, and so on. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, for example, cops in several cases obtained the telephone numbers of young people who had themselves been affected by sexualized violence in order to harass and threaten them again. For the vast majority of people, going to the police to file a criminal complaint is out of the question anyway if they are potentially exposed to racist police violence or threatened with deportation.

With our action “Against the Enemies of Freedom” we send solidarity greetings to the anarchists of the Parkbank from Hamburg. One of them is behind bars again since January and the companion was recently sentenced to 20 months in jail on 4 years probation. The prison sentence of the third one is still pending. More info: https://parkbanksolidarity.blackblogs.org

In addition much strength to the companions from Berlin, who were taken on 15.02.23 for two days in custody with the reproach of the “meeting to commit a crime”. Since then, both have had to report to the police station twice a week and both have had their DNA taken.

One of the last hugs to Alfredo, who has been on hunger strike in Italy since 20.10.2022 and is close to death.

Form gangs

Fire and flame against repression

Down with the police!

Smash patriarchy!

source: https://de.indymedia.org/node/267854

translated by Nae Midion

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