Respect instead of withdrawal from the alleged zeitgeist

"A strong country" was Germany at the beginning of this year: "A country that joins forces". When Olaf Scholz from the Berlin Chancellery looks at the republic, his gaze and his voice are gentle. "A country in which we leave no one behind," sees the social democrat, who spoke a lot about respect during the election campaign.

It would be interesting to know if the firefighters and police officers experience the country in a similar way when they are attacked on New Year's Eve in the same city while doing their job putting out intentionally caused fires. Our thanks go to them, who instead of celebrating with their loved ones, keep order on the streets despite all the adversity.

In the late afternoon, when many emergency services were just setting out for the Berlin Böllernacht, the colleagues from "Bild" reported on a new recommendation from the State Criminal Police Office for "discrimination-sensitive language use". So the police officers should now say "West Asian" instead of "Southern". Reason: The term is geographically inaccurate and has been negatively assigned by "anti-constitutional media". Concerns of the woken (linguistic) police in supposedly interlocked Germany.

Rainer Wendt, head of the German police union, reacted indignantly to "Bild": "In Berlin, young men from Turkey, Iraq or Lebanon are often involved in crimes." If these people were described as "West Asians", this would blur the reality of life , according to Wendt.

Striving for non-discriminatory policing is undoubtedly important. The excesses are still enormous. For three months, a research team from the Technical University (TU) Berlin accompanied emergency services during police checks in the drug hotspot Görlitzer Park. It was about "racial profiling", i.e. the question of whether people were selected for controls because of their skin color. The researchers also stood by the police like watchdogs during the controls.

The result of the TU project: "We didn't really observe racial profiling," sums up the head of the study at the TU. The checks always had a reason. The newspaper "Tagesspiegel" calls this a "surprising finding". The study cost 200,000 euros.

Drug dealers between children on playgrounds, drug-related crime in a residential area in the green-dominated district of Berlin-Kreuzberg. WELT reporters Martin Heller and Alexander Dinger report where left-wing drug policy, misunderstood tolerance and multiculturalism are leading.

Source: WORLD / Alexander Dinger, Martin Heller

Anyone who reads the Berlin police Twitter feed about New Year's Eve asks completely different questions. First, the social media team reports there with a lot of humor about the emergency calls of the night. Then it is more and more often about intentional arson and attacks on emergency services.

In the last tweet at three in the morning, the public relations workers say goodbye to the still restless night: "Reading the emergency calls has become increasingly difficult for us here."

Reports of a relatively peaceful New Year's Eve are coming from many other parts of Germany. In the cloudy capital, however, with the hip Neukölln scene around the Pyro hotspot Sonnenallee or Schöneberger Pallasstraße, where war had already been fought two days before, the police are reporting "significantly" more operations than in previous years. It's always about young people.

Perhaps the next research project in Berlin should deal with consistent police work, respect for emergency services and teaching values ​​in integration and education.

"Kick-off Politics" is WELT's daily news podcast. The most important topic analyzed by WELT editors and the dates of the day. Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or directly via RSS feed.