After the incendiary letter from the youth leisure shop “Chance” and the discovery of violent attacks by young people on students, the local advisory board calls for more police presence in Golm. Mayor Kathleen Knier (SPD), who also wrote the fire letter, admitted that mobile youth work alone was no longer enough. “This is a serious problem. There has to be a police speech,” she said on Thursday evening. All crimes must also be reported.
The CDU member of parliament Saskia Ludwig, who belongs to the local advisory board, asked for a police contact person for Golm. In any case, the presence of the police in the evening hours must be increased. The police had already announced this. “Social workers are simply overwhelmed with the situation. These are criminal offences,” said Ludwig.
According to the mayor, the regulatory office now patrols Golm every day – but in the morning when there are no young people to be found. The attacks on students occurred mainly in the evenings and at night. The vandalism also affected the interior of the university and the Fraunhofer Institute. The university has therefore increased protection, says Knier.
The weekend before last there had also been an obviously anti-queer attack. Students were injured by young people. The university and the General Student Committee (AStA) then called for a vigil. A student had reported racially motivated attacks. Such reports would frighten the older population of Golm in particular, said local advisory board member Heinz Vietze (left).
Funds for social work are to be released
The parliamentary group Sozial.Die Linke condemns the attacks. Nobody should be discriminated against, hostile, marginalized or threatened because of their sexual orientation, origin or religion. In an urgent application, the city councilor and member of the state parliament, Isabell Vandre, calls for a round of representatives from Golm to be convened as soon as possible, which should include not only members of the local advisory board but also social work and teachers. In addition, the university management, the AStA, the student union as well as the city administration and the youth welfare committee are to be represented in order to develop “joint measures and offers to prevent further attacks”. Mayor Mike Schubert (SPD) is asked to immediately release the funds to create more jobs in social work.
According to Isabelle Vandre, who only speaks of urgent preventive measures, new offers would have to be created and consultation rooms made available by the summer break. SPD MP Uwe Adler has a similar opinion: “We should be guided by the claim that beyond the repressive approach, we should also support the police and local authorities in the preventive area in the development and institutionalization of effective instruments.”
The CDU and its junior organizations Junge Union and the RCDS of the university are primarily demanding more police presence on campus. “With such a topic, neither the university nor the AStA need a purely symbolic policy,” said JU district chairman Andro Heinz. JU and RCDS also called for a round table at which the police must be represented.
The sometimes drastic descriptions in the fire letter point to a problem that has existed since the corona pandemic. Up to 60 young people regularly cause riots in Golm. The police have recorded an “increasing number of reports and operations” since October 2022. Investigations into individual crimes continued, according to a police spokesman.
To home page
