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Racism Is Surging in Germany. Tens of Thousands Are Taking to the Streets to Call for Justice
Tens of thousands of anti-racism protesters took to the streets in cities across Germany this weekend, in what may be the largest demonstrator turnout outside of the United States.
In Berlin, organizers expected 1,500 people to show up. Instead, an estimated 15,000 protested in Alexanderplatz, Berlin’s city center, with signs that read “Germany is not innocent” and “Black Lives Matter,” German media outlet DW reported. Demonstrators held a moment of silence that lasted eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck.
But the protests extended far beyond Berlin, with rallies organized in nine other cities across the country. Munich saw a crowd of at least 20,000 people and 14,000 people rallied in Hamburg. Even German football teams—including Werder Bremen, Wolfsburg, Borussia Dortmund and Hertha Berlin—kneeled in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Protests.
But protesters in Germany are not simply expressing outrage at police violence and racial discrimination happening in the United States, they’re calling it out in their own backyard.
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I was a police chief stopped by my own officer. After Floyd, we need change at all levels.
At 14, the more I screamed, the more the police beat me. That day, I promised myself I would become a Detroit police officer and change the force.
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Police officer who fatally shot D'Andre Campbell not providing interview, notes to police watchdog
Ontario's police watchdog cannot legally compel officers to speak or submit their notes.
The police officer who fatally shot a young Black man with schizophrenia at his family's Brampton, Ont., home in April has not agreed to an interview, nor turned over his notes to investigators, Ontario's police watchdog says.
The Special Investigations Unit, a civilian oversight body that investigates reports of deaths, serious injury or sexual assaults involving police, said in a news release Thursday that the officer involved in the shooting of D'Andre Campbell, whom it did not identify, "cannot be legally compelled to present themselves for an interview to the SIU," nor must they submit their notes.
Campbell, 26, was shot dead on April 6 after calling Peel Regional Police himself for help, his family recently told CBC News.
"It was D'Andre who called 911. He said he wanted to be taken to the hospital," his mother Yvonne Campbell told The Fifth Estate's Mark Kelley in a recent interview.
"He called out for help, and the system that was supposed to help him failed him," his sister Shenika Malcolm told CBC News in the days after his death. "There was no imminent threat and ... no de-escalation methods."
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85,000 cops who’ve been investigated for misconduct. Now you can read their records.
Officers have beaten members of the public, planted evidence and used their badges to harass women. They have lied, stolen, dealt drugs, driven drunk and abused their spouses.
Despite their role as public servants, the men and women who swear an oath to keep communities safe can generally avoid public scrutiny for their misdeeds.
The records of their misconduct are filed away, rarely seen by anyone outside their departments. Police unions and their political allies have worked to put special protections in place ensuring some records are shielded from public view, or even destroyed.
Reporters from USA TODAY, its affiliated newsrooms across the country and the nonprofit Invisible Institute in Chicago spent more than a year creating the biggest collection of police misconduct records.
Obtained from thousands of state agencies, prosecutors, police departments and sheriffs, the records detail at least 200,000 incidents of alleged misconduct, much of it previously unreported. The records obtained include more than 110,000 internal affairs investigations by hundreds of individual departments and more than 30,000 officers who were decertified by 44 state oversight agencies.
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