Germany shocked by Cologne New Year gang assaults on women

[MikeWB]

Shocked? LOL... they should have paid attention to Sweden. Idiots.

Germany needs to deport these animals or let people carry & own guns so they can put them down.



The mayor of Cologne has summoned police for crisis talks after about 80 women reported sexual assaults and muggings by men on New Year's Eve.

The scale of the attacks on women at the city's central railway station has shocked Germany. About 1,000 drunk and aggressive young men were involved.

City police chief Wolfgang Albers called it "a completely new dimension of crime". The men were of Arab or North African appearance, he said.

Women were also targeted in Hamburg.

But the Cologne assaults - near the city's iconic cathedral - were the most serious, German media report. At least one woman was raped, and many were groped.

Most of the crimes reported to police were robberies. A volunteer policewoman was among those sexually molested.
Germany's New Year shock - by Damien McGuinness, BBC News Berlin
Image copyright EPA Image caption The attacks took place close to Cologne Cathedral as fireworks exploded celebrating the new year

The pretty Christmas market and medieval setting may look idyllic, but at Christmas and New Year the area around Cologne Cathedral is a notorious danger zone when it comes to pickpockets and theft.

Now the sexual harassment, and in one case rape, of dozens of women has shocked Germany.

What is particularly disturbing is that the attacks appear to have been organised. Around 1,000 young men arrived in large groups, seemingly with the specific intention of carrying out attacks on women.

Police in Hamburg are now reporting similar incidents on New Year's Eve in the party area of St Pauli. One politician says this is just the tip of the iceberg.

And there are real concerns about what will happen in February when the drunken street-parties of carnival season kick off.

Cologne will stage carnival events in February, with hundreds of thousands of revellers expected in the streets, as on New Year's Eve.

The police chief said "the assailants' behaviour is a real concern for me, also because of the carnival".

Police were deployed outside the central station because of the crowds on New Year's Eve, but failed to spot the many attacks, according to reports. There are also fears that a number of women did not report assaults.
'Monstrous' assaults

Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker said the attacks were "monstrous". "We cannot allow this to become a lawless area," she said, insisting that visitors could not come to the city fearing attack.

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted that "we won't tolerate these abhorrent assaults on women - all those responsible must be brought to justice".

One man described how his partner and 15-year-old daughter were surrounded by an enormous crowd outside the station and he was unable to help. "The attackers grabbed her and my partner's breasts and groped them between their legs."

A British woman visiting Cologne said fireworks had been thrown at her group by men who spoke neither German nor English. "They were trying to hug us, kiss us. One man stole my friend's bag," she told the BBC. "Another tried to get us into his 'private taxi'. I've been in scary and even life-threatening situations and I've never experienced anything like that."

The justice minister warned against linking the crimes to the issue of migrants and refugees.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption A sign outside Cologne's central station warns about pickpockets

Germany saw a record influx of migrants in 2015, which provoked an intense debate on immigration and marches by the anti-Islam Pegida movement.

Mr Maas said "the law does not discriminate regarding a person's origin or passport. All are equal before the law".

Cologne news website Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger says the suspects were already known to police because of frequent pickpocketing in and around Cologne central station.
Wider problem

In Hamburg several women told police that gangs of men had molested and robbed them on New Year's Eve on the Reeperbahn - a street known for its boisterous night life.

Some similar attacks were reported in Stuttgart.

A policeman who was outside Cologne station during the New Year's Eve trouble told the city's Express news website that he had detained eight suspects. "They were all asylum seekers, carrying copies of their residence certificates," he said.

However, there was no official confirmation that asylum seekers had been involved in the violence. Commentators in Germany were quick to urge people not to jump to conclusions.

German n-tv news says Cologne police are considering calling in reinforcements from other parts of Germany and installing extra surveillance cameras, with telescopic lenses.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35231046

[Ognir]

[tweet]684448210757259264[/tweet]

[MikeWB]

Check this shit out... this woman should resign immediately.


Mayor of Cologne says women should have code of conduct to prevent future assault
Mayor Henriette Reker enraged people by focusing on women's actions instead of the men who carried out the assault

The Mayor of Cologne said today that women should adopt a "code of conduct" to prevent future assault at a crisis meeting following the sexual attack of women by 1000 men on New Year's eve.

Mayor Henriette Reker attended an emergency meeting with Chief of Police Wolfgang Albers and Wolfgang Wurm to discuss how to deal with the attack, where dozens of women were repeatedly touched and groped, with one case of alleged rape in the center of town.

"It is important to prevent such incidents from ever happening again," said Mayor Reker, as reported in German by RP Online. "We have heard by now that they [the attacks] have occurred in other cities. This of course is not comforting to us."

Hamburg also received complaints of sexual assault.
Read more
German police search for 1,000 men after mass sexual assault

The crisis management team said prevention measures should include a code of conduct for young women and girls, and Mayor Reker said the existing code of conduct will be updated online.

The suggested code of conduct includes maintaining an arm's length distance from strangers, to stick within your own group, to ask bystanders for help or to intervene as a witness, or to inform the police if you are the victim of such an assault.

In anticipation of large carnivals in the city centre in February, Mayor Reker promised an increased police presence. She warned young women about potential dangers of drunken events.

People expressed frustration at the focus on the victims rather than the perpetrators.

    Mayor of #cologne already victim blaming. If the German govt had any guts they'd deport the lot tomorrow https://t.co/dun3DESp6F
    — Lee Laborczfalvi (@laborcz) January 5, 2016

    @Independent Reker's (mayor of cologne) answer is to handout rules for women how to act in public
    — n.sloan (@Cinderssssss) January 5, 2016

    Cologne's female mayor: women must "maintain arm's length distance to strangers". Everything about this depresses https://t.co/8qkrawHnmj
    — Catherine Mayer (@catherine_mayer) January 5, 2016

Mayor Reker also said a "better explanation" to asylum seekers was needed about the meaning of the annual carnivals.
Read more

    * Schengen in 'danger' after Nordic countries bring in border controls
    * Arsonists destroy refugee hotel in Germany's 'model' migrant town
    * Pegida leader mocks critics over New Year's terror threat

"We need to prevent confusion about what constitutes happy behaviour and what is utterly separate from openness, especially in sexual behaviour," she said.

The attackers were described as North African and Arab appearance by the police. The Mayor has said that not all of the attackers were newly-arrived refugees and had already been known to the police, as reported by The Local.

Mayor Reker was seriously wounded herself in October when she was stabbed in the neck by a man who reportedly had anti-foreigner motives amid in escalating tensions about the refugee crisis.

[MikeWB]

Eyewitness account of what happened:

[rmstock]

[MikeWB]

'Mrs Merkel invited me': Cologne assailants' 'shameful' acts detailed in police report

A new German police report has described the situation during the mass assaults on women in Cologne on NYE as "chaotic and shameful." It outlined the highly inappropriate behavior of perpetrators, described as migrants, who demanded respect from police.

Groups of men bombarded police with fireworks and pelted people with glass bottles while officers unsuccessfully attempted to prevent mass assaults against women in Cologne on NYE, a new police report revealed.

The new police report outlined by Der Spiegel and Bild newspapers on Thursday described the situation in Cologne on New Year's Eve as "chaotic and shameful" as the police became too overwhelmed to prevent the "fights, thefts, sexual assaults against women."

The author of the report said that at some point police feared there could be fatalities.

Masses of "heavily intoxicated men" which were described by witnesses as migrants bombarded police with fireworks and pelted with glass bottles, the report said.

"When we arrived, our vehicles were pelted with firecrackers," the author of the report said. "In the forecourt and on the cathedral steps were a thousand people, mostly males of an immigrant background who were indiscriminately throwing fireworks and bottles into the crowd."

The perpetrators reportedly tore up residence permits in front of police saying: "You can't touch me. I'll just go back tomorrow and get a new one."
Read more
Women hold up placards that read 'We weren't prepared for this': Cologne police chief speaks out after NYE mass sexual assaults

The author of the report also cited one of the men engaged in the unrest as saying: "I'm a Syrian! You have to treat me kindly! [Chancellor Angela] Merkel invited me."

A police officer anonymously told The Express newspaper that his squad had detained several people who had "only been in Germany for a few weeks."

"14 were from Syria and one was from Afghanistan," he said.

The level of disrespect towards police was "like I have never experienced in my 29 years of public service," the author concluded.

The author of the report said that police officers who had been trying to reach people calling out for help were prevented from pushing their way through. Orders to leave the premises of the train station were ignored as well.

A lack of resources prevented security representatives from taking repeated offenders into custody as well as promptly registering all of the complaints at the scene, the report says. Witnesses were reportedly threatened when they tried to help identify the perpetrators.

Cologne police were not prepared to deal with the mass sexual assaults, the city's police chief told RT on Wednesday.

"Eventually we had a situation where a large group of men were going after women. We did intervene and help. But I'll admit that we were totally bewildered by it all. We have never encountered incidents like this before and we weren't prepared for it," Cologne Chief of Police, Wolfgang Albers, said.

German media said that police were "frustrated at their inability to help."

    Boosted police presence here in #Cologne, Germany after the mass assaults on #NYE. #Koeln#koelnbhfpic.twitter.com/EdSc7Va6fK
    — Harry Fear (@harryfear) January 6, 2016

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in turn, announced on Thursday that she would consider increasing police numbers and amending relevant laws.

"What happened at New Year is completely unacceptable," Merkel told a news conference in Berlin. "The feeling women had in this case of being completely defenseless and at mercy is for me personally intolerable and so it is important that everything that happened must come out into the open."
Read more
German Chancellor Angela Merkel © Hannibal Hanschke 'We can do it': Merkel defends Germany's refugee policy in NY address

Merkel stressed the necessity to continue reviewing deportation policies and "send a clear signal to people who do not want to stick to our legal framework."

The initial police report following the attacks in Cologne described the situation as "relaxed." Local authorities later admitted the report was incorrect.

Police said in a statement on Thursday that about 121 criminal cases have been reported, including two cases of rape, while 16 suspects have been detained.

Merkel has been criticized for her open-armed migrant policy; in 2015 Germany was the EU country to welcome the highest number of refugees. In her New Year's address, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for unity and solidarity across generations, social and ethnic backgrounds, and termed the ongoing refugee crisis an opportunity for the country.

European Studies professor, Laslo Maracs, told RT that the incident in Cologne stems from the fact that authorities couldn't be further from tackling the refugee crisis.

"We see often in such cases that the victims are blamed: the victims should follow a code of conduct, and not the people who have been committing crimes taken responsible for the things they have been doing!"

"It shows me that we are very far from solving integration puzzles, from building a society where more cultures could be accommodated or adopted. It shows that there is a lot of panic among city and regional governors. The situation is not under control," he said.

https://www.rt.com/news/328207-merkel-migrants-cologne-assaults/

[MikeWB]

Cologne attacks: New Year's Eve crime cases top 500

      10 January 2016

The number of criminal cases committed during new year celebrations in the German city of Cologne has risen to 516 - 40% of which relate to sexual assault, police in the city say.

The figures are a big increase from the 379 cases police reported on Saturday.

Asylum seekers and illegal migrants from North Africa comprise the majority of suspects, police say.

The crime spree led to criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door immigration policy.

That has resulted in 1.1 million asylum seekers going to Germany throughout 2015.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Some Muslims on Sunday carried signs denouncing the new year attacks in Cologne - the one on the right says "Islam against sexism"
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Anti-migrants protesters took to the streets of Cologne on Saturday

The new figures came as German authorities were urged to find out whether the series of New Year's Eve sexual assaults and robberies in Cologne were linked to similar crimes in other cities.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas told the Bild newspaper on Sunday that he was convinced the attacks were pre-arranged.

"If such a horde gathers in order to commit crimes, that appears in some form to be planned,'' he said. "Nobody can tell me that this was not co-ordinated or prepared."

    * Women describe 'terrible' assaults
    * Cologne mayor's 'code of conduct' attacked
    * The search for answers

Authorities and witnesses say the attackers were among about 1,000 people, mostly men, who congregated at Cologne's central train station before breaking off into small groups that molested and robbed women.

Police investigating the attacks say they are concentrating their inquiries mainly on suspects of North African origin.

Riot police on Saturday used water cannon to disperse anti-migrant protesters as Mrs Merkel proposed changes to make it easier to deport asylum-seekers who commit crimes.

The police's handling of the events has been sharply criticised.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Ms Merkel's "open door" policy had already attracted criticism from within her party before the Cologne attacks

Victims described chaos as dozens of sexual assaults and robberies were carried out with little apparent response from the authorities around Cologne station.

Similar attacks to those seen in Cologne were also reported in Hamburg and in Stuttgart on New Year's Eve. In Bielefeld, hundreds of men tried to force their way into nightclubs, Die Welt reported (in German).

Police said several women had alleged sexual assault.

On Friday, the chief of police for North Rhine-Westphalia was suspended. Wolfgang Albers had been accused of holding back information about the Cologne attacks, in particular about the origin of the suspects.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35277249