In light of the attack on the Christopher Street Day in Berlin, the Hamburg Police will approach this weekend’s CSD with exceptional caution. Hamburg Police President Falk Schnabel told the ARD Tagesthemen that they “will not take any risks” at this particular CSD, assuring the public that all attendees can expect “the highest possible level of safety.” After the Berlin incident, Schnabel confirmed that every security concept related to the parade route has been intensely reviewed.
Addressing the question of how the police deal with known threats, Schnabel stated that the current tools of police law sometimes reach their limits when observing these individuals. He explained that monitoring a single person permanently would require a “two-digit number of deployed officers.”
Furthermore, the police president highlighted the high legal hurdles surrounding preventive detention. Schnabel clarified that for pre-emptive arrest, the authorities must convince the court that a crime is “imminently about to happen” and that the period of detention is necessary to prevent it. According to Schnabel, most of the requests that the police would submit to the court would ultimately fail.
