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„For those affected, the actions of police at the scene of crime are often problematic. They have the feeling of not being taken seriously and of being treated as perpetrators instead of victims. They have to deal with prejudices and more than half of them felt like the police weren’t interested in elucidating the political motives of their offenders.“ (1)

On the night of Tuesday a racially motivated attack with multiple  casualties took place in Jena Lobeda. However, it took several days until it was coming to the public. Only a blog post by one of the parties concerned pointed to the assault. This was followed by a press release of the parliamentary group of „die Linke“. Based on this press release there have now been several reports in regional and national media. In those, the behavior of the police is here mentioned only in passing.

But for us, it is precisely the behavior of the police that raises some questions. This case is als ointeresting with regard to especially when compared with other cases in the recent past. The weekend before the attack took place in Jena, several clashes with partly right fraternity members, which were celebrating the 200th anniversary of the primordial fraternity in Jena, occured. A major police operation went into action with in minutes and a public manhunt call followed immediately. A remarkable difference to the assault of Tuesday night. According to the person concerned, it took the police about half an hour to arrive at the scene of crime.

The first thing they did was to do an alcotest with the victims and their further actions showed a lack of sensibility and confirms a behavior towards victims of racist violence that was known before in Jena and the rest of Thuringia. If the local village cops are unable to recognize racially motivated attacks as such, then one may wonder what the tasks of agencies such as the BAO Zesar are – if their colleagues in the field can not even write racism properly. Neither the assault nor the actions of police are isolated cases. Racist attacks repeatedly happened in Jena in recent months, only fortunately no one was injured until last monday. The notorious treatment of victims of right-wing attacks are apparent in cases like „Weimar in April„ or the above-cited study of ezra – mobile counselling for victims of right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic violence. The police here, as so often, the victims are not serious or do they even themselves perpetrators.

The fact that the attack last Monday was first put into a youth spectrum and a transfer of the investigation to the criminal investigation department was dismissed as unnecessary, paints a very negative picture of the local cops. It raises the suspicion of police turning a blind eye to the victims of racist attacks. The attemps of making the victims responsible for police failure by saying they had not pointed out the racist motives – minutes after the attack, probably still in the state of a shock and worried by their injuries – testify the lack of empathy and reversing victims to perpetrators. 

The fact that the person concerned the next day, when they tried to submit the X-ray images of their violations to give evidence, were fobbed off unfriendly, shows the climate for victims of racist attacks at the Jena police – this impression cannot be coverered by any subsequent Greetings from the Mayor or the Interior Minister to the victims. If their way to the coffee cup is already perceived as an effort, English is a foreign word, xenophobic and anti-Semitic resentments are cultivated and Racial Profiling sweetens the day’s events, then only one thing remains to be noted about thelocal police:

„For me, the police is not a friend and helper. She is a disturbing factor in my daily life. Even if I need their help, I have learned that I am considered first and foremost as a suspect object.“(2)

Finally, it should be noted that even in everyday police work officials act according to their ideologies. If that is mostly to see certain members of society as a threat, we can only assume that the cops in Jena consider migrants to be this threat, not neo-Nazis.

(1) They did not take us seriously, study on experiences of people affected by right-wing violence and their contact to police p. 5.

(2) Ibrahim H., Kein Freund und Helfer, Migazin, 24.10.2012.