Police officers, firefighters and paramedics in Brandenburg are becoming more and more victims of acts of violence during their operations. According to the Ministry of the Interior in Potsdam, there were 1,398 attacks on emergency services last year. That was 482 offenses or around 52 percent more than in 2013, as the ministry announced in response to a request from the AfD parliamentary group.
Crimes against police officers alone increased in the reporting period from 868 to 1275 – by 46 percent. In the case of the fire brigade and other rescue services, the number of offenses increased almost three and a half times, from 26 to 84.
According to police crime statistics, the violence was also increasingly directed at customs officials, Bundeswehr soldiers and employees of the Federal Agency for Technical Relief. The number of cases for these helpers has risen from 22 in 2013 to 38 last year.
Last year, the police identified 1,168 suspects in attacks on law enforcement officials. 932 alleged perpetrators were German. The police put the number of victims at 2,420. The clearance rate for these crimes was reported to be 99.4 percent. Almost 1,100 offenses concerned resistance to state authority and offenses against public order. (dpa)
