German police have said they do not have enough resources to carry out the interior minister’s plan to extend border controls as long as the refugee crisis continues.
The police trade union, GdP, said Thomas de Maizière’s proposal was unworkable because there were not enough officers to carry out the work indefinitely.
“For a time span of perhaps three weeks we could manage it, but for any longer time frame we simply don’t have enough people,” said Jörg Radek, deputy leader of the GdP.
Germany introduced border controls on 13 September last year in response to the huge influx of refugees, focusing most of its resources on the Austrian-German border. The regulations have been repeatedly extended, currently up until 13 February. De Maizière said on Thursday he would like them to be extended indefinitely.
Radek told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that the police were overstretched and were these days often unable to carry out their other duties. Since mid-September, officers had clocked up more than 2m hours of overtime, Radek said. “That’s the equivalent of 1,100 full-timers,” he said. Policing of airports and railway stations, not to mention football matches, was insufficient as a result, he added.
He feared that Austria’s announcement earlier this week that it would introduce a cap on the number of refugees would only increase pressure on Germany. “If the Austrians decide once they’ve reached their limit, they’ll send the rest on to Germany, then we’d face enormous problems.”
He said the plan to increase police numbers by 3,000 would have little effect in the short term. “We’ll only benefit from that in three years’ time, because you can’t simply put these people to work immediately.”
At present, about 2,000 refugees a day are arriving in Germany, a huge drop compared with periods in the autumn and winter when the number was about 10,000. Angela Merkel’s government is in agreement that the number is still too high but insists that any reduction requires a Europe-wide solution.
