Court: skin colour good reason for cop ID check

The Local (Germany) ^ | 27 Mar 12 12:06 CET

[DeaconBenjamin]

German police have been told they can continue to single out black train passengers on the basis of their colour to check their paper, prompting allegations of institutionalised racism.

"If this is true, it is essentially illegal," Tahir Della of the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD) told The Local. "The authorities have always said the police do not do racial profiling."

"Non-white people already get a disproportionate amount of hassle from the police, if this is now being officially sanctioned, then it will open the floodgates," he added. "I am of course very shocked by this. It is basically racism."

A Koblenz court knocked down the complaint of a black German man who got into an argument with two federal police officers who demanded his papers while travelling on a train.

He refused to show the officers his identity papers, and was taken off the train to a police station where his rucksack was searched and his driving license eventually found, the court said in a statement.

The officers then accused him of abusing them, and took him to court. During the hearing one of the officers said that when deciding which travellers to check, he sought out those who seemed to him to be foreigners and said one of his criteria was skin colour.

This prompted the man concerned to sue, saying their conduct was illegal. But the judges at the Koblenz administrative court in Rhineland Palatinate ruled on Tuesday that the officers had not acted illegally, but were guided by their “border policing experience.”

In the case concerned, the man had been checked on a route which was often used for illegal entry into Germany, the court said, although it did not reveal where the incident happened.

Because only spot checks were possible on such trains, the people selected could be chosen based on their appearance, the judges ruled.

[Red Dog #1]

I’m pretty sure our leftist friends didn’t have this mind when urging us to be more like Europe.

[SandRat]

JEEZ...Arizona gets yelled and sued by the government at for doing less under SB1070.

[GladesGuru]

Mr. Muslim seems not to have understood Angela Merkel’s famous line: “Multikulti ist tot!”

Hint to Mr. Muslim: Germans are reeallly good at reducing unwanted populations.

[BikerJoe]

In some ways, Germany can be surprisingly libertarian.

As late as the early '90s, you were on the honor system to buy a ticket for the subway, only enforced by random spot checks on-board by the conductor (with a hefty fine if you were found to without a ticket.)

There were signs in the cars that said, in German of course, "Don't be a N-word, pay your fare."

I also saw a television interview one time where an average soccer-mom was being interviewed about something or other (I can't remember), and she said "Oh, we don't like to do that, it makes us feel like N-words."

They didn't have any problem expressing their feelings about our darker-skinned brethren.

[boop]

The Yiddish for black is “schwartze”. Is this considered offensive? Or is there another term that Germans use that is equivalent to the N-word?

[BikerJoe]

The Yiddish for black is “schwartze”. Is this considered offensive? Or is there another term that Germans use that is equivalent to the N-word?

Apparently there is some debate among Germans about whether the word is offensive, with some definitely saying yes while others say no (as in, it was never meant to refer perjoratively to darker-skinned folk, although when pressed they can't say why it would be used in that way or what its negative connotation would be.)