Bavarian police union rejects racism claims over shooting of teenager

BR reported that the Police Union of Germany in Bavaria has rejected accusations of racism after a police officer shot a 14 year old in Munich last week. The union also warned against judging the officers before the incident has been fully investigated.

The student, who is a Turkish national of Kurdish descent, was carrying a realistic looking soft air pistol in the Schwabing district when an officer opened fire. He was seriously injured.

Florian Leitner, the union’s state chairman, called the racism accusation outrageous. He said a person’s origin or nationality was irrelevant in a life threatening operation, and that an imitation weapon which looks like a real firearm cannot be distinguished from a live weapon in a fast moving situation.

"Our colleagues cannot wait to see whether a shot is actually fired. By then it is too late," Leitner said. He added that the fact the victim was 14 made the case particularly tragic.

The union said every police shooting must be investigated fully and independently. It urged people to wait for the findings in this case.

Police said the student, who is from the Miesbach district, had been handling the pistol in the street while accompanied by a girl of about the same age. When plain clothes officers ordered him to drop what appeared to be a real weapon, police said he turned towards them while still holding it. An officer then fired.

The sequence of events remains disputed. The boy’s mother said he had told her that he turned around without properly understanding the situation, immediately raised his arms and shouted that the weapon was a toy. She said the shot was fired at that point.

The Munich Left and the Kurdish Centre Munich later presented an account that differed from the police version, saying the student had already put the weapon down when the shot was fired. Police maintain that he was still holding it.

Police said the soft air pistol looked very similar to a Beretta 92 nine millimetre pistol. The teenager was already known to police because of another incident.

About 100 people demonstrated in Munich over the weekend against what they considered racist police violence. The Greens Rosa List and Social Democratic Party groups on Munich’s city council called for tighter rules so that toy, soft air and similar weapons could no longer be sold when their size, shape and design make them impossible to distinguish immediately from real firearms.