Asylum seekers are driving a surge in violent crime in cities and towns across Germany. German authorities, however, are downplaying the lawlessness, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiment.
A confidential police report leaked to a German newspaper reveals that a record-breaking 38,000 asylum seekers were accused of committing crimes in the country in 2014. Analysts believe this figure — which works out to more than 100 a day — is only the tip of the iceberg, as many crimes are either not resolved or not reported.
The current spike in crime — including rapes, sexual and physical assaults, stabbings, home invasions, robberies, burglaries and drug trafficking — comes amid a record-breaking influx of refugees from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Western Balkans.
According to a classified document obtained by the German newspaper, Bild, the government now estimates that Germany will receive as many as 1.5 million asylum seekers in 2015, including 920,000 in the last quarter of 2015 alone. This figure is nearly double the previous estimate, from August, which was 800,000 for all of 2015. By comparison, Germany received 202,000 asylum seekers in all of 2014.
The document warns that with family reunifications, the actual number of asylum seekers could swell to more than seven million, based on the assumption that individuals whose applications are approved will bring between four and eight additional family members to Germany.
Separately, German authorities now estimate that at least 290,000 migrants and refugees have entered the country without being registered and whose whereabouts are unknown.
With more than 10,000 new migrants entering Germany every day, observers warn that crime in the country is sure to snowball. Experts say that many of the migrants will never be integrated into German society because they lack even the most basic skills to find work in the country. Some are warning of the establishment of parallel societies across Germany in which shiftless migrants are sustained by a volatile mix of taxpayer-funded social welfare handouts and crime.
Migrants are becoming increasingly unruly in their disrespect for German law. On September 11, for example, two asylum seekers from Libya attempted to shoplift items from a Netto-Markt grocery store in Freiberg, a town in the state of Saxony. After the men were caught with the merchandise by a security guard, they became violent and managed to escape.
A short while later, the men returned to the store with a machete and pepper spray, and began threatening the employees. When police arrived at the scene, the men attacked the officers, who fired warning shots into the air. One of the migrants was arrested; the other escaped.
Within hours, the detained man — a 27-year-old being housed at taxpayer expense in a refugee shelter in Freiberg — was released without charge. The next morning, the two men returned to the grocery store, pulled a knife and threatened to behead the employees.
According to local media, public prosecutors instructed police to release the men because they did not use force during the initial act of shoplifting. "The deeds could not be classified under the offense of robbery or predatory theft because the accused did not use violence or the threat of violence to carry out their act," a spokesperson said. In any event, he added, the men do not need to be detained because, as asylum seekers, they do not pose a significant risk of flight from justice.
Freiberg Mayor Sven Krüger, of the center-left Social Democrats, publicly denounced the judicial inaction. "Words fail me," he said. "I have no comprehension of our justice system; it released the offender. Yesterday he threatened employees and police. We cannot protect our citizens in this way, and the work of the police is wasted effort."
Local media report that the incident at the Netto-Markt is not an isolated event: that acts of shoplifting committed by migrants are becoming a fact of daily life in Freiberg, and the shoplifters seldom face consequences.
In early September, a supermarket cashier in the town was punched in the face by migrants after she tried to stop a brawl between asylum seekers inside her store. The manager of another store said that he has been verbally abused and spat at by migrants, and has been forced to hire a private security service to reduce losses from shoplifting by migrants.
In Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, police say they are helpless to confront a spike in crimes committed by young migrants from North Africa. Hamburg is now home to more than 1,000 so-called unaccompanied minor migrants (minderjährige unbegleitete Flüchtlinge, MUFL), most of whom live on the streets and apparently engage in all manner of criminal acts.
A confidential report, leaked to the German newspaper, Die Welt, reveals that Hamburg police have effectively capitulated to the migrant youths, who outnumber and overwhelm them. The document states:
"Even the smallest issue can quickly lead to aggressive offensive and defensive behavior. The youths come together in groups to stand up for each other and also to fight each other...
"When dealing with others, the youths are often irreverent and show a lack of respect for local values and norms. The youths congregate mainly in the downtown area, where they can be seen almost every day. During the daytime, they hang out mostly in the St. George district, but in the evenings they carry out their activities in the Binnenalster, Flora- and Sternschanzenpark and St. Pauli [all across central Hamburg]. They usually appear in groups; up to 30 youths have been observed on weekend nights in St. Pauli. The behavior of these highly delinquent youths towards police officers can be characterized as aggressive, disrespectful and condescending. They are signaling that they are indifferent to police measures...
"The youths quickly become conspicuous, mainly in the domains of pickpocketing or street robbery. They also break into homes and vehicles, but the crimes are often reported as trespassing or vandalism because the youths are just looking for a place to sleep. Shoplifting for obtaining food is commonplace. When they are arrested, they resist and assault [the police officers]. The youths have no respect for state institutions."
The paper reports that German authorities are reluctant to deport the youths back to their countries of origin because they are minors. As a result, as more unaccompanied minors arrive in Hamburg each day, the crime problem not only persists, but continues to grow.
Meanwhile, in a bid to save the city's tourism industry, Hamburg police have launched a crackdown on purse-snatchers. More than 20,000 purses — roughly 55 a day — are stolen in the city each year. According to Norman Großmann, the director of the federal police inspector's office in Hamburg, 90% of the purses are stolen by males between the ages of 20 and 30 who come from North Africa or the Balkans.
In Stuttgart, police are fighting a losing battle against hundreds of asylum seekers from Gambia who are openly trafficking drugs on the city's streets. At the same time, migrant gangs from North Africa are dedicated to the fine art of pickpocketing. Police say that one out of four migrants housed at a refugee shelter in nearby Remstal have been accused of theft.
In Dresden, migrants from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia have effectively taken control over the iconic Wiener Platz, a large public square in front of the central train station. There they sell drugs and pickpocket passersby, usually with impunity. Police raids on the square have become a game of whack-a-mole, with a never-ending number of migrants replacing those who have been arrested.
A local newspaper editorial expressed shock at the state of affairs in downtown Dresden:
"The central train station is normally a city's business card, at the same time it is also a magnet for dubious activities...
"But a visit to the site yesterday leaves one shuddering: desperate businesses, intimidated employees, shocked passersby — dealers selling their drugs in front of their eyes. This has created a climate of fear — and it must be swiftly countered.
"It cannot be that a gang of young men lays claim to an entire area to operate their illegal business. The Wiener Platz is a major entry point to Dresden.... Thousands of people — commuters and tourists — walk along there every day. They should be able to feel safe...
In Berlin, a classified police report leaked to the German newspaper, Bild, revealed that a dozen Arab clans hold reign over the city's criminal underworld. The report says the clans, which are dedicated to dealing drugs, robbing banks and burglarizing department stores, run a "parallel justice system" in which they resolve disputes among themselves with mediators from other crime families. If the German state gets involved, the clans use cash payments or threats of violence to influence witnesses.
Separately, a politically incorrect police report leaked to the German newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, revealed that more than 80% of the violent crimes registered in Berlin are committed by non-Germans.
At the same time, thousands of police officers in Berlin are no longer being allowed to carry guns because of cuts to the budget for mandatory firearms training.
In Duisburg, spiraling levels of violent crime perpetrated by immigrants from the Middle East and the Balkans are turning parts the city into "areas of lawlessness" — areas that are becoming de facto "no-go" zones for police, according to a confidential police report leaked to the German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel.
Duisburg, a key industrial city that has a total population of around 500,000, is home to an estimated 60,000 Muslims, mostly from Turkey. This total makes it one of the most Islamized cities in Germany. In recent years, however, thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians (including Sinti and Roma "gypsies") have flocked to Duisburg. This combination has been creating a volatile ethno-religious cauldron.
According to Der Spiegel:
"There are districts where immigrant gangs are taking over entire metro trains for themselves. Native residents and business people are being intimidated and silenced. People taking trams during the evening and nighttime describe their experiences as 'living nightmares.' Policemen, and especially policewomen, are subject to 'high levels of aggressiveness and disrespect.'
"In the medium term, nothing will change, according to the report. The reasons for this: the high rate of unemployment, the lack of job prospects for immigrants without qualifications for the German labor market and ethnic tensions among migrants. The Duisburg police department now wants to reinforce its presence on the streets and track offenders more consistently.
"Experts have warned for some time that problem neighborhoods could become no-go areas. The president of the German Police Union, Rainer Wendt, told Spiegel Online years ago: 'In Berlin or in the north of Duisburg there are neighborhoods where colleagues hardly dare to stop a car — because they know that they'll be surrounded by 40 or 50 men.' These attacks amount to a 'deliberate challenge to the authority of the state — attacks in which the perpetrators are expressing their contempt for our society.'"
The steady flow of leaked police reports seems to indicate that police are losing patience with the state-sponsored multicultural policies that are making Germany increasingly more unsafe.
German authorities have repeatedly been accused of underreporting the true scale of the crime problem in the country. For example, according to the head of the association of criminal police (Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter, BDK), André Schulz, up to 90% of the sex crimes committed in Germany in 2014 do not appear in the official statistics. He said:
"For years the policy has been to leave the [German] population in the dark about the actual crime situation... The citizens are being played for fools. Rather than tell the truth, they [government officials] are evading responsibility and passing blame onto the citizens and the police."
Schultz also warned that, based on past experience, fully 10% of the migrant population will end up being involved in criminal activity, including theft, assault or drugs. This implies that with the massive influx of migrants in 2015, Germany is effectively importing 100,000 additional criminals into the country.
Meanwhile, crime reports use all manner of politically correct euphemisms to describe foreign suspects without using the terms "migrant" or "Muslim migrant."
On October 7, for example, an 86-year-old woman had her purse stolen by a man with "dark hair" (dunklen Haaren) in Bad Urach. Also on October 7, three "southerners" (Südländer) robbed a clothing store in Fellbach.
On October 6, an 89-year-old woman in Darmstadt was robbed by two men who spoke German with an "Eastern European accent" (osteuropäischem Akzent). On October 5, a 72-year-old man was robbed by three people with a "brownish skin" (bräunliche Haut) in Stuttgart.
On October 2, a 64-year-old woman had her purse stolen by two women with "black hair" (schwarze Haare) in Gießen. On October 1, a 24-year-old man was robbed at knifepoint by two "dark skinned" (dunkelhäutig) men in Wiesloch.
On September 11, a 16-year-old girl was raped by a man with "a dark skin type" (dunklem Hauttyp) close to a refugee shelter in the Bavarian town of Mering. On August 30, a 21-year-old man was robbed by two men speaking "broken German" (gebrochenem Deutsch) in Karlsruhe.
On August 30, a 24-year-old man was assaulted by a man with a "southern appearance" (südländischem Aussehen) at a gas station in Ludwigsburg. On August 30, a 33-year-old man was attacked with pepper spray and robbed by two men with a "southern appearance" (südländisches Erscheinungsbild) in Stuttgart. On August 29, four Germans were assaulted by a man with "short dark hair, dark eyes, southern appearance" (südländisches Aussehen) in Überlingen, a city on the northern shore of Lake Constance.
On August 29, a 21-year-old man was robbed by two men with "brown skin color" (braune Hautfarbe) in Heidelberg. On August 28, a woman with "long black hair" (schwarzen langen Haaren) stole 1,000 euros from a 95-year-old man and a 93-year-old woman in Sigmaringen, a town in Baden-Württemberg.
On June 5, a 30-year-old Somali asylum seeker called "Ali S" was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for attempting to rape a 20-year-old woman in Munich. Ali had previously served a seven-year sentence for rape, and had been out of prison for only five months before he attacked again. In an effort to protect the identity of Ali S, the newspaper, Münchner Abendzeitung, referred to him by the more politically correct "Joseph T."
In a book titled, "The End of Security: Why the Police Can No Longer Protect Us," author Franz Solms-Laubach writes that German police are becoming increasingly demoralized in the face of spiraling crime. He blames German policymakers for budget cuts and staff reductions that are making it impossible for the police to do their job, namely to protect German citizens and their property.
According to Solms-Laubach, non-Germans make up roughly 10% of the German population, but they commit more than 25% of the crimes. The only solution, he argues, is that migrants must understand that if they commit crimes in Germany, they will be deported.
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in early 2016.
Karen L. Greiner'