Police Use of Excessive Force in Germany E-Book

Laila Abdul-Rahman

• Herausgeber: Campus Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 869

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Excessive use of force by police officers in Germany has only been investigated to a limited extent to date. This book provides comprehensive scientific findings on relevant situations and how they are dealt with under criminal law. Based on a survey of victims with over 3,300 participants and more than 60 qualitative interviews, the cases are presented as complex interactions in which the police's special power of definition becomes apparent.

Leseprobe

Laila Abdul-Rahman, Hannah Espín Grau, Luise Klaus, Tobias Singelnstein

Police Use of Excessive Force in Germany

Translation: Will Burn, Carrington Editorial

Campus VerlagFrankfurt/New York

About the book

Excessive use of force by police officers in Germany has only been investigated to a limited extent to date. This book provides comprehensive scientific findings on relevant situations and how they are dealt with under criminal law. Based on a survey of victims with over 3,300 participants and more than 60 qualitative interviews, the cases are presented as complex interactions in which the police's special power of definition becomes apparent.

Vita

Laila Abdul-Rahman, Hannah Espín Grau and Luise Klaus worked as research assistants in the KviAPol research project (»Körperverletzung im Amt durch Polizeibeamt*innen«). Tobias Singelnstein is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Law at Goethe University Frankfurt.

“Like a stone falling into water to create spreading ripples that may change the lines in the sand on a distant shore, violence transcends the moment of inflicted harm and comes to be inscribed into the structure of society itself.” (Koloma Beck, 2011, p. 348)

Übersicht

Cover

Title

About the book

Vita

Content

Copyright notice

Content

Foreword

1

Introduction

1.1

Starting points

1.2

On force and violence

1.3

Concepts and terms in this investigation

1.4

About this book

2

Research into police use of excessive force in Germany

2.1

Data from official statistics

2.2

Empirical studies and evidence gathered by civil society

2.3

Summary

3

Methodology

3.1

Quantitative survey of victims

3.1.1

Population and sampling

3.1.1.1

Target population

3.1.1.2

Snowball sampling and public outreach

3.1.2

Online questionnaire

3.1.2.1

Development and pretesting

3.1.2.2

Reference incident

3.1.2.3

Data protection and data security

3.1.3

Data collection phase and validation

3.1.4

Sample

3.2

Qualitative expert interviews

3.2.1

Sampling and field access

3.2.1.1

Our definition of “expertise” for the purpose of the study

3.2.1.2

Sampling

3.2.1.3

Field access and recruiting

3.2.1.4

Sample: description and criticisms

3.2.2

Collecting data

3.2.2.1

The survey

3.2.2.2

Carrying out the interviews

3.2.2.3

Data protection and research data management

3.2.3

Data analysis

3.2.3.1

Focused interview analysis

3.2.3.2

Four-phase evaluation

Phase 1: initial textual work

Phase 2: developing categories

Phase 3: initial coding

Phase 4: evaluation, interpretation and presenting findings

Step 1: thematic summaries

Step 2: fine coding

Step 3: analysis based on research questions

3.3

Validity and limitations of the study 

4

Situations in which force is used, its forms and consequences

4.1

Occasion and sequence of events

4.1.1

Occasion of police contact

4.1.2

Causes of confrontations

4.1.3

Location of the incident

4.1.4

Duration and time

4.2

Characteristics of police officers

4.2.1

Number of police officers present

4.2.2

Uniforms and operational areas of police officers using force

4.2.3

Age of police officers using force

4.2.4

Gender of police officers

4.3

Type and frequency of use of force

4.4

Consequences of use of force

4.4.1

Physical injuries

4.4.2

Psychological effects

4.5

Summary

5

Interaction and escalation

5.1

Communication

5.1.1

Role of communication in de-escalating situations

5.1.2

Inappropriate police communication

5.1.3

Provocation and lack of respect shown by victims

5.1.4

Arguments and asserting rights

5.1.5

Language barriers

5.2

Non-compliance, assertions of authority and “resistance cops”

5.2.1

Perceptions of non-compliance and resistance

5.2.2

Asserting authority and dominant behaviour

5.2.3

“Resistance cops”

5.3

Other factors affecting interactions

5.3.1

Stress and excessive demands

5.3.2

Intoxication and mental illness

5.3.3

Flight and pursuit

5.3.4

Video recordings

5.3.5

Behaviour of fellow officers and senior officers

5.3.6

Other persons present

5.4

The moment of escalation from victims’ perspectives

5.4.1

Types of escalation moment

5.4.2

Police intervention

5.4.3

Specific behaviour of police officers

5.4.4

Refusing to follow instructions

5.4.5

Actions taken by victims or third parties

5.4.6

Situational dynamics

5.5

Experiences of discrimination

5.5.1

Victims’ perceptions of discrimination

5.5.2

Discrimination as a factor in interactions

5.5.3

Racism

5.6

Summary

6

Evaluating police use of force

6.1

Standards applied to evaluating police use of force

6.1.1

On the relationship between different standards

6.1.2

The legal standard

6.1.3

The community expectation standard

6.1.4

The administrative standard

6.2

How perspectives shape evaluations of police use of force

6.3

Victims’ evaluations

6.3.1

Evaluating police practice

6.3.2

Evaluating police use of force

6.3.3

Factors which influence evaluations

6.3.4

Summary

6.4

Police officers’ evaluations

6.4.1

Grey areas and specific reference to the legal standard

6.4.2

Precedents and the administrative standard

6.4.3

Police practice between the standards

6.5

Evaluations by public prosecutors and judges

6.6

Summary

7

Methods employed by police officers and victims to deal with problematised use of force

7.1

Police responses

7.1.1

Normalisation and conversations with colleagues

7.1.2

Responding to reports of offences

7.1.3

Report writing as a means of controlling narratives

7.1.4

Police officers as witness in criminal proceedings against colleagues

7.1.5

Reporting colleagues for offences

7.1.6

The role of senior police officers

7.2

How victims deal with and report use of force

7.2.1

Accessing support outside the criminal justice system

7.2.2

Deciding not to report incidents

7.2.3

Decisions in favour of reporting incidents

7.3

Summary

8

How the criminal justice system handles accusations of unlawful use of force

8.1

How criminal proceedings are initiated and conducted

8.1.1

Relationship between dark and light figures

8.1.2

Problems with reporting incidents

8.1.3

The subsequent stages of criminal proceedings

8.2

Roles and practices of institutions involved in preliminary proceedings

8.2.1

Competencies and cooperation between police and public prosecutors

8.2.2

Police investigations

8.2.2.1

Distinctive features of internal police investigations

8.2.2.2

Offices of internal investigation

8.2.3

Public prosecutor investigations

8.2.3.1

Increased workload of investigations

8.2.3.2

Institutional proximity between the police and public prosecutors

8.2.3.3

Specialist public prosecutors’ offices

8.2.4

Preconceptions in criminal proceedings related to bodily harm in public office

8.3

Interviewing police officers in preliminary proceedings

8.3.1

Distinctive characteristics of police witnesses

8.3.2

How police witnesses are dealt with

8.3.3

How police suspects are dealt with

8.4

Distinctive evidential characteristics 

8.4.1

Difficulties with identifying police suspects

8.4.2

Evaluating conflicting evidence from statements

8.4.3

Third-party witnesses

8.4.4

Objective evidence

8.4.4.1

Video recordings

8.4.4.2

Medical evidence

8.5

Public prosecutors’ charging decisions following preliminary proceedings

8.5.1

Outcomes of proceedings into bodily harm in public office

8.5.2

Charging decisions: practices and impacts

8.6

Court proceedings in charges of bodily harm in public office

8.6.1

Judges: roles, powers and preconceptions

8.6.2

Police witnesses at court proceedings

8.6.2.1

Distinctive features of police witnesses

8.6.2.2

How judges handle police witnesses

8.6.3

Victims and other public witnesses in court proceedings

8.6.4

Unusual features of convictions of police officers

8.7

Summary

9

The relationship between criminal proceedings into bodily harm in public office and proceedings into resistance to enforcement officers

9.1

Criminal proceedings against victims

9.1.1

Initiating proceedings against victims

9.1.2

Outcomes of proceedings against victims

9.2

Reports and “counter-reports”

9.2.1

On the ratio of reports to counter-reports

9.2.2

“Counter-reports” against victims

9.2.3

“Counter-reports” of bodily harm in public office

9.3

Methods employed by public prosecutors to handle conflicting proceedings

9.3.1

Consolidating related proceedings

9.3.2

Separating related proceedings

9.4

Summary

10

Discussion

10.1

Situations and interactions involving use of excessive force

10.2

Evaluations and outcomes: the power to control narratives in action

10.3

Further reductions in complexity within the criminal justice system

10.4

The functional dominance of the police

10.5

Prospects

Appendices

Appendix I: Transcription rules

Appendix II: Respondents’ injuries

Appendix III: Factorial analysis of items on behaviour of those involved

Figures

Tables

Literature

Foreword

This book presents the results of the “Police Use of Excessive Force: processes of victimisation, reporting behaviour, structure of the dark figure” research project. Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the project was carried out from 2018 to 2022 at the Department of Criminology at Ruhr University Bochum. In 2022 the project was transferred to the Chair of Criminology and Criminal Law at Goethe University Frankfurt.

When we began our research in 2018, the use of excessive force by police and how it is handled by the criminal justice system was already gaining traction in public discourse. This meant the project came at the right time to supply empirical evidence to expand and enrich social engagement with the issue. In particular, the project dealt with a perspective that had previously gone largely unexplored: that of the perspectives of those who had been affected by the police use of excessive force.

Given the considerable public interest in the topic, we published our initial findings from the project in two interim reports in 2019 and 2020.1 During that period we have enjoyed many different opportunities to present the project and our findings, such as presentations to academic conferences, police authorities and training universities, and civil society organisations such as victims’ initiatives.

Above all we would like to thank the 3,373 victims who took part in our quantitative survey. Despite what were in some cases deeply troubling experiences, they resolved to confront again what they had experienced and describe that for the purposes of our research. Without the efforts of the 1,669 gatekeepers who helped promote our survey we would not have been able to reach many of these victims. We would like to thank all these people for their enthusiastic support. We are also very grateful to the 63 individuals we interviewed from civil society, law enforcement and the judicial system. Despite facing barriers in some cases, they gave up their time to share their experiences and insights in conversation with us. This study would not have been possible without these many different individuals.

Our sincere thanks go to the members of the project advisory board. Over the course of many meetings we were greatly helped by their valuable discussions and ongoing feedback. We would like to thank Elisabeth Auchter-Mainz, Rafael Behr, Andreas Dickel, Carsten Dübbers, Martin Herrnkind, Daniela Hunold, Ulrich von Klinggräff, Philipp Krüger, Thomas Naplava, Stephanie Schmidt and Elena Zum-Bruch.

Our special thanks go to Benjamin Derin for his enthusiastic support throughout the whole course of the project, not only with suggestions for the substance of the project but also for his contributions around layout and graphic design. We would also like to thank Louisa Zech for answering so many of our questions, and Julia Habermann for her tireless support, particularly around quantitative analysis. We would also like to thank our former colleague Nadine Drolshagen for her valuable work during the design phase of the project. Furthermore, our thanks go to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) which made it possible to carry out this project independently. We are also very grateful for the outstanding support we received from Catharina Kubin at Campus Verlag. The English translation of the study was supported by a generous grant from the DFG’s "ConTrust - Trust in Conflict" research initiative, for which we are extremely grateful. We would like to thank Will Burn for his excellent collaboration in translating our findings into English.

Lastly, we would like to extend our particular thanks to those other colleagues in Bochum and Frankfurt who contributed to our work, supporting our project in many different ways. Their countless critiques, observations and ideas enriched and advanced our work. We thank Jennifer Degner, Christopher Friedrich, Marius Garnhartner, Ricardo Gummert, Adriana Jinschek Jordano, Marius Kühne, Friederike Lorenz, Jennifer Martens, Malin Meffert, Johannes Niemz, Marie-Theres Piening, Jonas Reitz and Helene Spieles, as well as Jana Buschmann, Lisa-Marie Kranz, Susanne Möbius and Marlene Stiller.

Frankfurt, February 2025

Laila Abdul-Rahman, Hannah Espín Grau, Luise Klaus and Tobias Singelnstein

1Introduction

The issue of how the police use force is coming under increased scrutiny in Germany. The discussion ranges from questions of how cases of police violence should be evaluated, to the powers which the police should be allowed to exercise, and whether problematic practices and structures exist. We hope the findings of our research will help provide a robust evidential basis for these societal debates. A key element in this is drawing in the experiences of those affected when police use force, and making those perspectives visible.

1.1Starting points

The everyday use of force by police affects many different situations and individuals and extends across a range of degrees of severity. That said, certain situations are particular focuses for the use of force, such as demonstrations and protests. Here, for example, the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017 is frequently cited as a notorious example of a failure to address the issue of police use of excessive force. Then in 2021, complaints were submitted to the then United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, concerning police officers’ use of force in the context of protests related to Covid-19 policies. Melzer’s report on his investigation was unambiguous. He stated he was deeply concerned about the situation in Germany, reserving particular criticism for the “dysfunctional command and control structures, which may well meet all normative and institutional requirements on paper, but which are incapable of effectively responding to official misconduct in practice.”2

The use of force by police officers attracts particular attention when it is associated with serious or even deadly outcomes. The death of 16-year-old Mohamed Lamine Dramé from Senegal prompted widespread public debate in August 2022 after he was shot with a machine pistol by a Dortmund police officer. The debate focused on what types of force officers should be allowed to use in a given situation and also on the limits that could be applied.3 In January 2020 a 33-year-old woman named Maria was shot dead by a police officer in Berlin. Her flatmate had called the police because of domestic violence. The case inflamed the debate around how police deal with individuals suffering from mental illness.4 One of the most well-known cases in Germany was the death of Oury Jalloh, who died in a fire in a police cell in Dessau. The fact that his case still remains unresolved throws into stark relief the scale of institutional problems of investigating contested uses of force by police.5

For decades, activist initiatives and victims’ advocacy groups have criticised the fact that police use of force in Germany particularly affects racialised persons. The UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Githu Muigai, called on Germany in 2009 to do more about institutional racism in the police.6 In recent years, victims’ voices have been given more of a hearing in the public debate, particularly thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been gaining strength in Germany and other countries. Chance discoveries of police chat groups sharing far-right content and the greater awareness of reports of racial profiling have put the issue of racism on the agenda for the police, which we considered in our second Interim Report (Abdul-Rahman, Espín Grau, Klaus & Singelnstein, 2020).

The common link between racial profiling and physical violence is demonstrated by a case from Bochum, in which plain-clothes police officers overpowered a 16-year-old boy on his way to school in 2020. He refused to identify himself as he did not believe they were police officers. However, instead of explaining the situation, the officers violently shoved him to the ground. They said later they had been looking for drug dealers and the boy had appeared suspicious and dangerous. He was the only child making his way to school along that road with Turkish migrant heritage.7 Academic literature has often described the particular concerns held by marginalised persons about police use of force (excessive or otherwise). Alongside racism, their concerns include classism, sexism, ableism and other forms of discrimination and how these intersect (cf. Bruce-Jones, 2015; Keitzel & Belina, 2022; Loick, 2018; Thompson, 2018). However, these perspectives generally receive little attention in public debates.

If we consider society in Germany as a whole, the police enjoy high levels of trust and a predominant image as a “friend and helper”. The more closely an individual identifies with white German dominant society (Rommelspacher, 1998), the more likely they are to see police action as legitimate (cf. Abdul-Rahman, 2022). As such, police use of force is “essentially undisputed” (Brodeur, 2002, p. 259). Cases where police use excessive force represent a surprising and disconcerting breach of this dominant perception. In light of this, those affected often have limited power to report incidents to the police, a situation which can be further exacerbated by their position in society. In spite of growing debates in society around police use of excessive force, most cases ended without any official consequences. Furthermore, cases which receive attention in the media represent only a small section of the problem.

This book presents the results of our research project, and it is against the background of these observations that it shifts the focus onto how victims perceive situations of police use of excessive force and how such cases are investigated and handled. To achieve this, we surveyed 3,373 individuals on their experiences of police use of force which they felt were unlawful. They were also surveyed on how they had dealt with their individual situations. Following this, we conducted expert interviews with individuals from the police, the criminal justice system and civil society. Examining data collected across various methods opens up a range of perspectives when analysing the situations in which police use force, the dynamics of how incidents escalate, how those involved evaluate these situations, and the structural problems which affect how the criminal justice system handles such incidents.

1.2On force and violence

Before we consider the questions of police use of excessive force and how those involved respond to it, we first need to specify what is meant by “force” and by “violence”. The German term “Gewalt” maintains the ambiguity of the Latin root “violentia” and can therefore refer not only to a physically transgressive act, but also to a notion of power (such as “Staatsgewalt”, cf. Koloma Beck, 2011, p. 348). This makes it necessary to distinguish between “violence” (Gewalt) and “force” (polizeiliche Gewalt) in English. Violence can be employed at a micro- or macro-social level and can affect individuals or entire societies. When we talk about police use of force in our research, we are referring to physical violence employed by police officers against other individuals in the course of carrying out their duties. This study therefore focuses on physical force between individuals at a micro level. However, the fact that the individual employing force holds a public office means that such instances cannot be considered separately from their institutional and structural environments and impacts (Collins, 2011, p. 57 ff.; cf. also Koloma Beck, 2011). Hence we have not considered cases where force was employed in purely verbal or psychological forms. We follow Koloma Beck in conceptualising violence as a social process which relates to the body and which produces an asymmetrical relationship between two or more people (2011, p. 349).

Violence is not an ontological category. Rather, an action comes to be defined as violence on the basis of moral, ethical and legal considerations (cf. Christ, 2017, p. 11; Koloma Beck, 2011, p. 351). In Western societies, the use of violence is primarily viewed as “a shortcoming in modernisation, a way of acting that is ‘backward’ or ‘retrograde’.” (Koloma Beck 2017, p. 16). The “disorderly” dimension of violence is distinguished from how police use of force functions in restoring and maintaining order in society (cf. ibid. p. 17).8 The perception of violence as legitimate or illegitimate depends on the power those involved have to define an action as violent. The decisive factor here is not if and how violence is employed, but rather who can legitimately employ force and under what conditions (cf. Zuckerhut, 2010, p. 291).

The state retains a “monopoly on legitimate violence” (Weber, 1926, p. 8) and confers the authority to exercise that power (potestas) on individual institutions such as the police and military, making it legal to use force in certain situations. As a consequence the police is one of the few institutions which can under certain circumstances use force legally and legitimately. However, Germany’s constitution and primary legislation places strict limits on use of force, using the term “direct compulsion” (”unmittelbare Zwangsanwendung”) to refer to the lawful use of force (cf. Neuwald, 2022). Police should never use force for its own sake. It should only be used to carry out other police actions, such as enforcing an instruction to leave an area. The use of force is permitted when there is an appropriate legal basis for doing so, when no other equally effective means is available, and when the disadvantages due to using force are proportionate to its purpose. In most instances, police use of force affects the victim’s mental and physical integrity. As such, it falls within the scope of human dignity as described by 1(1) of Germany’s Basic Law (Grundgesetz, GG). From a legal perspective this therefore demands that proportionality be judged against a strict standard. This is expressed in the principle of ultima ratio, according to which police may only use force as a final resort in the carrying out of their duties. Exceeding this limit turns the limited act of “potestas” into an act of “violentia”. Here the law plays an ambivalent role. On the one hand it limits police use of force, but at the same time it sanctions what occurs within those limits and thereby confers on the police a unique power to use force.

In practice, the use of force is a part of everyday policing. What the law conceives of as an exception becomes a normal part of their work in the eyes of officers enforcing that law. This makes it necessary to separate the fact that force is used from the ways in which that force is evaluated by law and society. The question of whether an action was legal and legitimate must be answered on another level (cf. Brodeur, 2002, p. 261). Furthermore, the rather theoretical legal distinction between lawful and unlawful force proves to be less clear in day-to-day life. Behr goes so far as to argue the distinction is artificial: “The illegitimate use of violence (violentia) is inherent to the legitimate use of force (potestas), such as in an excess of violence, where a legal police action goes ‘too far’” (2019a, p. 28). Deciding the point at which police use of force ceases to be appropriate and proportionate and becomes inappropriate and disproportionate “may be difficult, but it is of fundamental importance to the public and the police” (Wiendieck et al. 2002, p. 37). The fundamental importance of this distinction arises from two aspects. Firstly, violence is an extreme experience for those affected, and secondly, society condemns violence.

1.3Concepts and terms in this investigation

This analysis focuses on police use of excessive force. By “excessive” we refer to acts which, in the view of the person evaluating the incident, exceed what is acceptable. This does not necessarily overlap with a belief that force was used unlawfully. Rather, it means that, in the eyes of at least one individual, force was used excessively and problematically.

Our previous work on this issue has shown that distinguishing between proportionate and disproportionate force is a complex equation, not a calculation with an unambiguous answer. These judgements are therefore the focus of processes of negotiation and definition in which various subjective perspectives wrestle in the context of imbalanced power relations. Ultimately one of these perspectives wins out and gains the appearance of objectivity. If several people evaluate an instance of police use of force, it is possible that they could all come to the same conclusion. However, they could equally evaluate the same case in different or even contradictory ways. The consequence of this is that cases where the use of force is challenged (such as by questioning police action or making formal or informal complaints) can become contested where those involved later seek to impose different interpretations on what happened.

It therefore follows that, strictly speaking, clear categories of police use of proportionate force and police use of excessive force exist only on an abstract, theoretical level. In practice, these categories emerge only from the processes described above by which individual cases are negotiated and defined. When it comes to evaluating police use of force, the law is only one of several standards. In this sense, Herrnkind argues that “even actions which are legal under the rule of law can be perceived as illegitimate. And it generally depends on social power relations whether lawful actions of this kind have socio-political validity” (2003, p. 148). The academic discussion of police use of excessive force must therefore also consider the processes by which such interpretations are formed. To this end we took an empirical approach to investigating contested examples of police use of force and the processes of evaluating these incidents from the perspective of the various participants and observers. The accounts and views we gathered therefore reflect the subjective perspectives of survey respondents and interviewees.

There are a number of reasons why we took this approach to our investigation. Firstly, it is true that the law is a binding and therefore significant standard for evaluating police use of force in society. However, its mode of binary distinctions between lawful and unlawful means it can give only an imperfect account of the social complexity of interactions of this nature. In particular it implies a clear boundary between actions that are permitted and forbidden, but in practice that is not always easy to discern. At the same time, the law is not the only standard for evaluating police use of force. Those affected can draw on other criteria for their judgements from their own perspectives. Following Stoughton et al. (2020) our investigation shows that social and policing standards can be used to assess these incidents in addition to the law, each focusing on different aspects (see Chapter 6). The range of these perspectives and the backgrounds to them are obscured if judging them against the standard of the law is considered to be the only valid option. This is relevant to police practice as “for society to have a reliable understanding of the job of a citizens’ police force and how it manages its monopoly of violence in the context of its function to maintain order, it is not enough to be guided only by the criminal law and formal aspects of legality” (Schütte, 2014, p. 31).

Secondly, our choice of approach was essential, as this investigation (as is standard for criminological studies of victimisation) puts the perspectives of those affected front and centre. The project included the first-ever large-scale quantitative survey of victims of police use of excessive force in Germany. The survey was not limited only to cases which had been handled by the criminal justice system. Rather, our aim was to foreground the perceptions of those affected, particularly with a view to advancing our understanding of the dark figure (i.e. incidents which are not known to the criminal justice system). Therefore the evaluations of these interactions with police came necessarily from those who had been affected. When recruiting participants to the survey we invited those who had experienced what they believed to be the unlawful use of force. This phrase was explained at the beginning of and at several points in the course of the survey. The survey also asked respondents to explain in their own words why the incident where police employed force was “excessive or unnecessary”. These explanations are themselves a subject of our research. The research team is not able to carry out a legal assessment of the individual incidents described, nor is it the purpose of research in the social sciences (for a detailed discussion of this, see Abdul-Rahman et al., 2019a; cf. also Lehne, 2008, p. 276).

Thirdly, given their potential as a source of information (as described above), our investigation was not limited to cases which had been investigated and where the facts had been established by in a court of law. Indeed, those cases which are currently the focus of some form of legal investigation to define what happened are also the object of our research. We understand the interpretations which are applied to incidents in which force is used as the outcome of a process of imbalanced power relations. The power of the police to interpret incidents is limited by the power of those affected to make complaints (cf. Feest & Blankenburg, 1972). However, it was imperative that we should not limit our investigation only to incidents where this process of interpretation and definition has concluded in a given way. This would make it impossible to explore problems and deficiencies in how the criminal justice system deals with these incidents, and the dark figure would remain untouched.

As such, our research considers any incident where police employed what was considered to be excessive force. However, the findings from some parts of our investigation do relate to police use of force in general, regardless of how others interpret it. These points are explicitly stated in the text. Our approach follows current US research into this issue, particularly in focusing on how individuals evaluate interactions and the differences in how parties interpret and perceive police use of force (cf. H. Meyer, 2021).

1.4About this book

Since our research project began in 2018 we have published two Interim Reports and disseminated our findings in numerous other publications in various areas. This book draws on our publications so far and explores various aspects in greater depth. In particular, the following chapters address topics which we have not previously explored. These include the details of the interaction, how police respond to accusations of bodily harm in public office, discrepancies in how police use of force is evaluated, and how the criminal justice system handles accusations of police misconduct. We have now analysed a substantial part of the data collected during our study and thereby laid the groundwork for further empirical research into the police. This will make it possible to explore in greater depth specific aspects of incidents where police employ force.

In Chapter 2 we begin by outlining current research into police use of force (excessive or otherwise) and how the criminal justice system handles incidents in Germany. In Chapter 3 we describe the design of our research and our methodology. In subsequent chapters we summarise and analyse the findings of the victims survey alongside the outcomes of qualitative expert interviews. There are three stages to this analysis. Firstly, we investigate situations where police employed force, treating them as dynamic interactions (Chapters 4 and 5). We then explore the various perspectives on these incidents and how they were handled by victims and by police officers (Chapters 6 and 7). Finally we investigate how the criminal justice system handles police use of excessive force (Chapters 8 and 9). Chapter 10 summarises and discusses the findings of the preceding chapters.

For our research to properly record and interpret not only these interactions but also how they have been evaluated and handled, it is necessary to draw together the various perspectives on police use of excessive force and include them in our study. The perspectives of those involved should not be treated as neutral and objective representations of relevant incidents and their problems. Rather, they are subjective impressions shaped by each individual’s experiences, as well as by the roles of the various participants in the situation and their evaluations of conflict situations of these kinds. In this regard it makes no difference whether the individual was affected by excessive force or if they are a police officer, public prosecutor or judge, and we had to take this subjectivity into account when analysing the data. This is by no means a deficiency: on the contrary, it is a strength of this investigation. Ultimately, achieving a "neutral" non-perspectival view of the object” of this (or any) topic is almost impossible, as Žižek argues: “The site of truth is not the way ‘things really are in themselves’ beyond perspectival distortion but the very gap or passage which separates one perspective from another […] which makes the two perspectives radically incommensurable” (Žižek, 2012, p. 48).

Our approach brings visibility to an area where police dominance is structural and ever-present. For example, it affects interactions themselves as they are dominated by police officers. It tips the scales of the process by which these incidents are interpreted, revealing how police interpretations dominate processes of evaluation. And it affects how the criminal justice system handles these incidents, a system which is not only shaped by the institutional proximity of the police and public prosecutors, but which also overwhelmingly perpetuates police interpretation of disputed incidents. Viewed from the perspective of victims, it is clear that those affected are in a weaker position and are less able to make effective complaints against any of these three areas. The consequence of this is that complexity and ambiguity are stripped away from how police use of force is interpreted, rendering it structurally immune to questioning.

2Research into police use of excessive force in Germany

Outside Germany the topics of police use of force and police violence are the subject of a large body of research (cf. e.g. Alpert & Dunham, 2004; Alpert & MacDonald, 2001; Geller & Toch, 1996; Hine et al., 2018; Jobard, 2007; Klahm et al., 2011; Lersch & Mieczkowski, 2005; Paoline et al., 2021; Paoline & Terrill, 2011; Prenzler et al., 2013; Stoughton et al., 2020; Terrill, 2005). However, although the questions and problems in this area are similar around the world, the differing legal, social and institutional environments in which police act limit the extent to which empirical research into the USA and other countries can be applied to the situation in Germany. This chapter therefore aims to provide a summary of research into the area in Germany.

2.1Data from official statistics

German Police Crime Statistics (PCS) recorded 2,084 criminal investigations into bodily harm in public office (§ 340 StGB) in Germany in 2021 (Federal Criminal Police Office, 2022). While the statistics showed a decline in complaints of such offences up to 2019, the number of cases recorded has risen sharply since 2020 (cf. Figure 1). It should be noted that this offence covers cases of bodily harm by any holder of public office – such as teachers – and cases involving police are not analysed separately.

By contrast, statistics for public prosecutors have included a separate category since 2009 known as Section 53 which records the outcomes of investigations into police officers for unlawful use of force and abandonment. The statistics show that public prosecutors handled 2,790 criminal investigations of this type in 2021.9 Such cases have been rising since 2018.10 These statistics also show the unique pattern of outcomes of criminal investigations into police officers. It is unusual for the above-average rate of closed investigations and an extremely low rate of charging at only 2% (Abdul-Rahman, Espín Grau & Singelnstein, 2020a; cf. also Singelnstein, 2014). A detailed examination of the pattern of outcomes and analysis of the reasons behind it may be found in Chapter 8.5.

Figure 1:Investigations into bodily harm in public office (PCS) and investigations of police officers for the unlawful use of force (Prosecution statistics)

Source: Federal Criminal Police Office (2022); Federal Statistical Office (Prosecution statistics Section 53); own illustration11

What the two sets of statistics have in common is that they only depict the “light figure” of cases where complaints were made or of which the criminal justice system became aware by other means. This means these statistics only document proceedings initiated by state institutions on the one hand and how the criminal justice system handles these cases on the other (Derin & Singelnstein, 2019; Kant, 2000; Singelnstein, 2014). Reviews of cases in the light figure have been carried out in Bavaria (Luff et al., 2018) and Saarland (Schlun, 2018). The research office of the Bavarian State Criminal Investigation Department was unable to identify any indications that the high rate of terminations was structural in origin. In his work on Saarland, however, Schlun showed that while it did not appear that the law had been broken, there was certainly evidence of problematic practices among public prosecutors. These practices included failures to investigate victims or suspects (cf. ibid. p. 106).

2.2Empirical studies and evidence gathered by civil society

Incidents which are not reported to the authorities or which do not come to their attention by other means do not appear in official statistics and therefore remain in the “dark figure”. Until now there have only been occasional investigations in Germany into the dark figure and/or the actual incidence rates of the unlawful police use of force. On the one hand, only some of the work on police use of force explores the issue of excessive force. Much only looks at how police use force in a wider sense without attempting to conceptualise the question of how such force is evaluated. Furthermore, most studies take a wider view and set use of force alongside other forms of police action. Below we present the key findings from studies of police use of force (including excessive force where present) which are relevant to our research interests. What becomes particularly clear is that, until now, too little attention has been given to victims’ perspectives.

Maibach (1996) drew on qualitative interviews with police officers to identify signs of a deep-rooted culture of unlawful violence. This study mainly focused on individual factors. In these interviews, police officers describe the “practice shock” they experienced in the early stages of their careers. The term remains current today and refers to the tension between a police officer’s claim to hold a position of power and authority on the one hand, and the problem of asserting that position in practice on the other hand. The reasons given for reported assaults on the public included stress (at home or at work), group dynamics, fear of and anger with the individual they were dealing with, limited ability to communicate or a lack of empathy, and the fact that, as an organisation, the police is closed to outsiders (ibid. p. 191).

Wiendick et al. (2002) focused on police perspectives in a study which employed group and individual interviews and questionnaires to investigate the experiences of day-to-day policing at a Cologne police station. Their work also revealed difficulties on the part of police officers in terms of distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate ways of dealing with the public. 28% of police officers surveyed said that they felt a colleague had gone too far in the past. Furthermore, 29% said they had to “consciously apply the brakes” when using force, and 62% of respondents had had their patience stretched to breaking point through contact with the public. Moreover, 23% said that they had at least once used the full extent of their discretionary powers without good reason (ibid. p. 37). The study also showed that situational factors were particularly relevant in terms of crossing the line between legitimate and illegitimate force (ibid., p. 38). However, the authors were unable to draw more detailed conclusions about the frequency or intensity of police misconduct due to a lack of data (ibid. p. 41). Dübbers (2015) repeated the 2011 survey and came to similar conclusions, while also noting a trend in policing culture towards a more community-focused approach.

These findings were also confirmed by von Behrendes (2003), who drew on his own professional experience as a police officer and a range of research to argue that assaults by police officers are usually caused by individual errors of judgment and officers becoming overwhelmed as situations escalate. It seems likely that most regular police officers and members of anti-riot units had used disproportionate levels of compulsion at least once while on operations (ibid. p. 174). Hence, von Behrendes argues, there exists within the police a certain tolerance for inappropriate behaviour of this kind by colleagues (ibid. p. 175).

A representative quantitative survey of police in Lower Saxony investigated the intentions behind assaults by police officers (Bosold, 2006). Bosold showed that these were a combination of individual attitudes to a situation in the form of how the assault was evaluated, a conviction that this was in line with norms, and the perception of behavioural control (ibid., p. 104 ff.). Police officers were also asked how often they had used force in the last 12 months, but the question on prevalence did not distinguish between lawful and unlawful force. 67% of officers said they had used force in the period in question, while 22% had used or threatened to use a firearm (ibid., p. 122). Older officers were less likely to report using force (ibid., p. 120). The strongest predictor for the use of force turned out to be the punitivity of an individual officer and their willingness to use force offensively (ibid., p. 130). Again, this survey focused on police perspectives and individual risk factors.

Also of note is Behr’s work based on ethnographic observations and interviews within police forces (e.g. 2006, 2008, 2014, 2019b, 2020). This provided far-reaching insights into police cultures while also investigating the police’s relationship with using force. It was through his work that Behr coined “cop culture” as a term in Germany to describe problematic and often male-dominated structures, attitudes and perspectives within the police, which, he argues, have a propensity to use force and tend towards authoritarianism. Behr identifies problems with the lack of structures to deal with misconduct (including violent behaviour), and with the fact that the overwhelming majority of police officers did not report their colleagues and covered up bad behaviour (Behr 2009). Herrnkind (2003, 2004) and more recently Seidensticker (2019, 2021) have also discussed the issue in similar terms.

Feltes et al. (2007) interviewed focus groups of police officers in seven German Länder on the use of force. Their aim was to investigate personal and cultural patterns in how police officers justify their use of force. A fear of escalation and a desire to retain authority were identified as reasons why police use force. Events which justified the use of force included attacking the authority of the state, a lack of respect for the police, and assaults on officers themselves (ibid., p. 301). Feltes et al. argue that it is clear that the legal limits on actions blur as incidents escalate (ibid., p. 294). They also argue that many police officers believe that regaining control over a person or situation legitimates the use of excessive force. At the same time, it has been shown that very few police officers report malpractice by colleagues (Klukkert et al., 2009, p. 185).

Hunold’s findings (2011) from ethnographic observations of interactions between police officers and young people show that police strategies to legitimise the use of compulsion have less to do with legal infractions than behaviour which challenges police authority (ibid., p. 182). Her work also draws attention to the discriminatory police use of force against young people from migrant heritage. She stresses the significance of social spaces in police practices, including how police use force. Dangelmeier and Brauer (2020) and Hunold et al. (2021) also explore this aspect.

Reuter (2014) based her research on observations of subjects within the police. She identified factors which promote escalation, such as personality characteristics, facial expressions, gestures, verbal and non-verbal communication, and police officers interacting in conflicts (ibid., p. 54). However, she was only able to observe two incidents where force was actually used operationally, and it is not known if these were considered excessive (ibid., p. 77).

The Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony employed a quantitative survey of police officers in Lower Saxony to investigate how police use force (Ellrich & Baier, 2015). They found that force was used in 0.4% of the operations reported to the survey even where no risk characteristics were present (ibid., p. 38). With regard to the individual characteristics, the study also identified that the majority of officers who employed force were male and willing to take risks (ibid., p. 40). Ellrich & Baier also surveyed the population of Lower Saxony on their experiences of police employing force. The researchers also found that 0.5% had experienced physical force at the hands of officers (ibid., p. 31), but the rate of reporting these incidents was only 17%, much lower than for offences involving bodily harm in general (ibid., p. 39).

Tränkle (2015, 2017) interviewed police officers from Baden-Württemberg where the primary goal was to investigate resistance to police officers by members of the public. However, it emerged that the term “resistance cop” [”Widerstandsbeamter”] is used by the police to refer to officers whose behaviour and poor de-escalation skills often provoke violence and who are also more likely to resort to force themselves.

Schmidt’s recent ethnographic study (2022) sheds light on the significance of emotions, particularly anger, in how police officers conduct their duties. In the study Schmidt shows that as professionals in the use of force, police officers try not to let feelings like anger, frustration and annoyance to dictate their actions, as that would be considered unprofessional (ibid., p. 274 ff.). Schmidt concludes that the use of force in a professional context always requires some form of moral or normative legitimation, which is usually identified as violent behaviour by the individual with whom an officer is interacting. As such, violence is framed as a reaction in most cases (ibid., p. 281 f.). Police actions can “get out of hand”, but this does not always entail employing high levels of force (ibid., p. 288). Police officers described how anger made them lose self-control (ibid., p. 287 ff.). Schmidt argues that for “police officers in an institution which depends on the legality of its use of force, it seems logical [to present the police use of excessive force as an exception.] Above all, this is because police officers agreed that a lawful police operation can always get out of hand and they do not always have the power to stop it or respond adequately.” (ibid., p. 289). Schmidt argues that this demonstrates how excessive force is a common feature of everyday policing, but officers regularly classify it as an exception.

Alongside studies which focus on how police use force, there is a broader body of research into situations with a high propensity for conflict. Some of this investigates demonstrations (Hunold et al., 2018; Malthaner et al., 2018; Nassauer, 2019; Schmalzl, 2011; Sturm & Ellinghaus, 2002; Ullrich, 2018) while other work has focused on football matches (Barczak, 2014; Feltes, 2010, 2013; Kruszynski, 2016). A number of critical and theoretical discussions and anthologies have been published on police use of force in Germany examining the police and its relationship with violence at a theoretical level (Herrnkind & Scheerer, 2003; Loick, 2018; Pichl, 2014).

However, the lack of work on the connection between racism and police use of force in Germany represents a major blind spot in empirical research (cf. Jacobsen & Bergmann, 2021, p. 50). In other countries and the USA in particular, numerous studies have demonstrated a connection in this area (Costanza & Helms, 2019; Desmond et al., 2016; Dottolo & Stewart, 2008; Hadden et al., 2016; Kahn, 2017; Lautenschlager & Omori, 2018; Paoline et al., 2016; Remster et al., 2022; B. W. Smith & Holmes, 2014; Tolliver et al., 2016). The case studies conducted by Bruce-Jones (2015) analysing intersectional influences on how police use force are an exception in Germany, as is the work of Thompson (2018; El-Tayeb & Thompson, 2019) which takes a postcolonial perspective on the police and how police use force. In addition to this, one-third of the 1,945 individuals surveyed in the Afro-census (Aikins et al. 2021) who identify as Black, African or from the African diaspora said they had been affected at least once by police use of force (ibid., p. 120). Our project, the results of which are presented in this volume, has also engaged with issues of racism and experiencing discrimination in the context of police employing force (Abdul-Rahman, Espín Grau, Klaus & Singelnstein, 2020). Issues of racism and the police and in Germany have been the subject of public debate in recent years, and a number of studies have been set up to investigate issues such as problematic attitudes and discriminatory practices in the police. These include a police study by the Hesse Ministry of the Interior and Sport (2020), a study of police practice between state mandate and public criticism in Lower Saxony (Jacobsen et al. 2021), the national “MeGaVo” study of motivations, attitudes and violence in everyday policing (Schiemann, 2022), the “DeWePol” research project into democracy-related attitudes and values within the Hamburg Police (Kemme et al., 2022), the “INSIDER” study of internal security and democratic resilience in Rhineland-Palatinate and the “Berliner Polizeistudie” (Howe et al., 2022). In addition to this, there are some sub-projects under the auspices of the “InRa” study into institutions and racism by the Forschungsinstitut Gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhalt (FGZ). It remains to be seen whether these studies will yield data on the issue of force used by police officers.

In addition to academic sources, civil society and activist groups are a particularly important source of knowledge on this subject area. The “KOP – Kampagne für Opfer rassistischer Polizeigewalt” (Campaign for Victims of Racist Police Violence) analysed cases of discriminatory police action in Berlin in the period from 2000 to 2010. Of the 70 accounts they documented, 54 suggested that police used excessive force (ibid., 2010, p. 9). According to the KOP study, factors which make these victims particularly vulnerable include coming from non-German backgrounds (actual or presumed), assumptions about belonging to a criminalised and stigmatised milieu, uncertain residence status, and mental illness. On this basis, KOP argues it is by no means unusual for the Berlin Police to employ excessive force (ibid., p. 13). KOP also compiled a chronicle of police incidents in Berlin between 2000 and 2018 which were described as racist. This includes numerous incidents where force was used (KOP, 2018). Other groups and initiatives which carry out documentary and interventional activities include “Death in Custody”, “Go film the Police”, “Bürger*innen beobachten die Polizei”, and various copwatch groups. Various alliances have been set up following deaths of people of colour at the hands of the police, such as “Initiative in Gedenken an Oury Jalloh”, “Initiative Christy Schwundeck”, “Initiative Gerechtigkeit für Adel”, “Bündnis in Erinnerung an Qosay”, “Gerechtigkeit für Hussam Fadl”, “Initiative Aman Alizada”. The human rights organisation Amnesty International has repeatedly collected information about abuse by police officers and analysed individual cases (Amnesty International, 1994, 2004, 2010). These accounts indicate that police exercised their power to use force in numerous cases in ways that compromised the victim’s human rights, and that the subsequent handling of these cases by the criminal justice system was marked by substantial evidential difficulties.

2.3Summary

If one considers research into the phenomenon of police officers’ use of excessive force with the aim of identifying research into the dark figure and actual incidence rates, it becomes clear there is almost no empirical data for Germany. H. Meyer (2021) argues that drawing on US research could offer a promising model for future research into how German police use force. In Meyer’s view, the findings of US research make it obvious that researchers should focus more on how race and space influence interactions. She argues that it would be beneficial to take an “integrative approach in use of force research, which firstly breaks down the dichotomous distinction between lawful and unlawful actions, and secondly focuses on the interaction from the perspectives of both sides” (ibid., p. 131).

Despite the fact that criminal investigations into police use of force are terminated at exceptionally high rates, too little research has investigated how the criminal justice system handles these cases. In the 1980s Brusten (1992) led research into institutional opportunities to control police misconduct, which was the first investigation of the pattern of criminal and disciplinary investigations into police officers in Germany (cf. Kant, 2000, p. 21). However, little is still known about the background to the processes and practices of the key players in criminal investigations. A number of researchers have explored possible ways of explaining the unusual way that the criminal justice system investigates and handles such cases, including Arabi (2017), Müller (2014), Singelnstein (2003, 2010, 2014, 2019) and Zühlke (2021a). Theune (2020) has recently analysed the unique role played by police officers as witnesses in criminal investigations.

Taking the available research as a whole, it is clear that hardly any attention has been given to the perspectives of victims12, while police perspectives on incidents of this kind predominate. The findings of our projects presented in the following chapters foreground the perspectives of victims and will help to close this substantial gap in the research. They will also make it possible to view the subject of this research in its entirety. Secondly, very little research has investigated how the criminal justice system handles police use of force. Here our findings provide a wide-ranging insight into criminal investigations of this nature and may suggest areas where more research is needed.

3Methodology

Our study follows the mixed methods approach, comprising a quantitative online victimisation survey and qualitative expert interviews supported by a discussion guide (cf. Figure 2). Designing our research in this way makes our starting point the perspectives of victims in all their diversity and complexity. This is supplemented by qualitative analysis of the viewpoints of further actors in the police, judiciary and civil society.

The following section discusses the design and choice of methodology for both parts of the project, followed by a discussion of the study’s limitations.

Figure 2:Research design

3.1Quantitative survey of victims

Until now there has been no systematic investigation of the perspectives of individuals in Germany who have been affected by police use of force which they considered excessive (cf. Chapter 2). The study took an exploratory approach based on a large-scale quantitative online survey to provide the widest possible overview of a field which has been subject to little research.

Unreported cases of this type of offence were of particular interest to our work, so the study was not limited only to incidents which had been subject to official investigations into bodily harm in public office. Rather, the aim was also to include incidents where the victim felt the force they experienced was excessive, but where they had not reported the incident to the authorities. It is certainly true that there is an almost complete absence of data both on the dark figure for this type of offence, and on the structure of unreported cases.

For this reason the project chose to survey victims, a tool which is a standard form of research into unreported cases (cf. Guzy et al., 2015; Haverkamp, 2019, p. 16; Prätor, 2014, p. 45). Survey data of this kind depicts the perceptions of those affected and is therefore always subjective. In broad terms, the victimisation survey sought to gather data on the following areas:

Who feels affected by police use of excessive force and in what situations does that occur?

How does the interaction develop from the victim’s perspective? What causes incidents to escalate?

What type of force is used, what consequences does it have and how is it dealt with?

Why do victims believe the force to have been unjustified or excessive and therefore unlawful in their view?

What reasons drove a victim’s decision for or against making a complaint of bodily harm in public office? If criminal investigations were initiated, how did they proceed?

3.1.1Population and sampling

The first step before conducting any quantitative survey is to define the population which the study seeks to understand and identify how to access that group. Since limited time and financial resources make it impossible to survey every member of the population, it is necessary to select a sample of the population.

That sample must be representative if conclusions are to be drawn about the population as a whole. A sample may be considered representative when respondents are chosen at random and all members of the population have the same chance to take part in the survey. However, this is extremely difficult to achieve in practice when investigating phenomena such as victimisation due to police use of force, which is comparatively rare in the population as a whole and/or likely to be very unevenly distributed (cf. Diekmann, 2021, p. 399 f.; Trübner & Schmies, 2022). The following section therefore explains who the target population of the quantitative element of the study represents. We also outline our reasons why we decided to take a non-representative approach to sampling in the form of the snowball sampling method.

3.1.1.1Target population

The survey was designed to reach people who had experienced police use of force which they considered excessive. We could have begun by taking a representative sample of the whole population of Germany and employing screening questions to only survey those individuals who had experienced incidents of this nature. The advantage of this approach would have been that it would have made it possible to calculate the prevalence of the phenomenon within the population of Germany; in other words, how many people in Germany had experienced police use of force within a given period that they considered unlawful. On the other hand, this would have required surveying a huge number of people just to reach a significant number of people in our target population.

In this we assume that the majority of the population has never experienced police use of force that they considered unlawful. A 2012 survey where the sample represented the whole population of Lower Saxony included questions on whether respondents had been pushed, restrained, hit or kicked in the past year. “[…] 0.47% of respondents [said] they had experienced police use of force. One of the primary reasons why respondents reported these experiences may be that they felt the use of force was excessive” Ellrich & Baier, 2015, p. 39). Taking this figure as a starting point, we would have needed to survey over 21,000 people to reach only 100 victims; finding 500 victims would have required a population of over 100,000. This pattern is evident in the Lower Saxony survey, as only 19 of the 5,866 individuals surveyed provided responses that gave an insight into behaviour associated with reporting incidents (ibid., p. 30 f.). As questions of this kind are central to our research, we would have needed to survey hundreds of thousands of individuals in order to obtain a sufficiently large sample of victims from the population of Germany. This would have been an inordinately expensive and inefficient sampling method (Trübner & Schmies, 2022, p. 1239). While one might logically assume that the lifetime prevalence is higher than the annual prevalence of 0.5%, it does not seem likely that it would be so high as to make it possible to reach an adequate sample without undue cost.