Berlin, the Police, and Roma

A lecture by a federal police officer at the federal government’s open day in Berlin last weekend sparked sharp criticism from the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma and the religious policy spokesman for the Green parliamentary group, Volker Beck.

According to the Central Council and Beck, the representative of the Berlin Directorate of the Federal Police gave a public lecture in the Federal Ministry of the Interior entitled “Beware of thieves! How pickpockets use tricks and how you can successfully ruin their criminal journey.” In it, Roma are said to have been generally referred to as “large criminal families” organized into “criminal clans” that move through Europe. Other ethnic groups were also racially discriminated against: each ethnic group, North African or Polish, had “its own criminal methods”.