I think the German police clearly thought he was not going to get justice from the US (hence the remarks about how lucky he was that they got him before he got on the plane) and saved him from falling into the FBI's trap.
Considering the rash of "OMG the police barged into my house, shot my goldfish and raped my star wars collection" type stories I've been hearing, is it safe to assume that the German police are quite a bit more sensible than their American counterparts?
The whole experience sounds rather civilized. The police let Gembe get dressed, eat breakfast and smoke a cigarette before bringing him down to the station. And when he confessed, his punishment was 2 years in probation.
I somehow doubt his experience with the FBI would have been similar.
> is it safe to assume that the German police are quite a bit more sensible than their American counterparts?
It depends. Gun ownership isn't nearly as common in the US, so they can safely assume that a 17 year old blackhat won't pull a gun on them.
On the other hand, I've seen a ~4.9 feet tall girl getting knocked unconsciously with a Mp5 during the eviction of a squat. In 2003, a schizophrenic in custody was beaten to death by officers in Cologne. They were sentenced from 12 to 18 months in probation. In 2005, Oury Jalloh burned to death in a holding cell in Dessau while being tied with handcuffs to a fire-proof mattress at his hands and feet. In 2008, Josef Hoss was beaten to a bloody pulp by a special unit after his arrest. He is irreparably crippled. He later recieved 30,000€ for compensation.
A lot larger as in landmass. People pay attention to what goes on in their geographic area, regardless of its population.
For example, a beating in California isn't going to be as troubling to a resident in Vermont. They'll simply say "different state, different police force". On the other hand, a beating in Berlin is going to trouble someone in any part of Germany.
Not true: the former border police (Bundesgrenzschutz, parent organization to the famous GSG 9) has been officially the Bundespolizeit (federal police) since 2005, and there has always (well, since the 1951) been a federal investigation agency (Bundeskriminalamt). Most claims of police violence are actually against the Bereitschaftspolizei (riot police units, exist both at state and federal level), which is not surprising since they are deployed (and trained) mainly for potentially violent situations.
To clarify: I know there are federal investigative police (but not as powerful as the FBI, right?) so I deliberately used the verb, meaning enforcement. I didn't know there were federal riot police though.
ANYWHERE you get people whose jobs are power-over-others based, you'll get fuckwads taking those jobs to feel powerful. Then abusing those jobs for the same reason. It has nothing to do with the nation and everything to do with the nature of people and policework.
Some of the police brutality comes down to poor decision-making due to poor training and little experience. I never saw it that way until I read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. There's a chapter where he discusses an incident in New York where cops shot up an innocent guy. The analysis was that in high-pressure situations, the mind ceases to function and focuses purely on survival and sustaining one's self. One becomes essentially autistic in being unable to recognize social signs such as facial expressions, body movements, etc, and the outcomes when weapons are in play are often gruesome.
It was quite an enlightening read, and I think I take it seriously because my own experience in high pressure situations. First was a time when I was taking a walk with my dad and some kids surrounded us. One tried to spray pepper spray in my face from behind, but my dad saw he was doing something so yelled at him, and my dad got sprayed instead. Then they all ran. I was stunned and couldn't process what was going on; really, I was just so focused on the guy in front of me, my decision-making process was paralyzed.
My second was when I was the venue technology manager for Cypress Mountain at the Vancouver Winter Olympics (freestyle skiing and snowboarding). In terms of operational pressure, that was the most difficult thing I ever experienced, and even more so because Cypress was literally the most difficult and complicated venue of the Olympics. There were situations where my brain literally just shut down and I was going 100 miles an hour trying to fix whatever went wrong; there's a word for that, it's called panic. If it weren't for the training I had and some of my more experienced colleagues, I imagine it would have been an utter disaster.
I can only imagine that if I have some guns, batons, or any other type of weapon, and am meant to quell a situation, it could get ugly easily.
edit: One more anecdote, my friend is an immigration officer. He had an incident once where he and another officer were interrogating a guy because some papers or something needed clarification. The guy suddenly made a move, they misinterpreted, and it became an all-out brawl. My friend distinctly remembers yelling at his colleague and his colleague yelling back at him, but they could not hear each other. Their minds were in a zone where they could no longer communicate, they were just subconsciously focused on survival. Later, it all turned out to be a mistake, but in the heat of the moment, it was hard to discern that.
Germany neither has a War on Drugs nor a meth problem. There have been highly criticized raids in Germany, but there are fewer raids per capita in Germany, and in Germany police-citizen interaction is less violent (no automatic assumption that that driver that was just pulled over is armed, for example).
Please. Do we need any more anti-US rhetoric here?
I see no reason to believe that he would have been treated differently by the FBI, and besides, he would probably have been extradited right back to Germany.
You don't appear to be aware of what's going on in the US right now. I would also suggest reading what pg has to say about identity (and keeping it small).
"..There is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you."
