Set of the Day

Podcast Platform & Label

Police are getting ready for a big mission

Whether the Fusion Festival may take place decides in a few days. Internal papers now show that the police have been preparing for months for a confrontation.

In the conflict over the Fusion Festival in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the police is preparing a much larger stake than previously known. This is clear from a police paper that is available on ZEIT ONLINE. The local police headquarters also initiated months ago a bachelor thesis at the Police College in Güstrow, which should show the possibilities for police intervention. In this way, internal documents of the organizer have also reached a police officer who has nothing to do with the approval process: He is a lecturer at the Police College, former AFD member and was convicted of dangerous bodily harm.

Organizers and police have been arguing for weeks: The Fusion Festival has been taking place since 1997 on a former Soviet military airport on the Mecklenburg Lake District, meanwhile with around 70,000 visitors – virtually no police presence so far. This year a dispute between the organizer Kulturkosmos Müritz and the police chief of Neubrandenburg, Nils Hoffmann-Ritterbusch, has flared up over whether officials are stationed on the site from the outset or are called in emergencies as before (read more about the conflict here around the Fusion Festival). In the background, not only the plans for a mobile guard with twelve officials are underway, but preparations for a major deployment.
This is what a police deployment concept, which is available on ZEIT ONLINE and dates back to March 12 of this year, provides. At the same time, about 100 officers, uninformed and in civilian form, are to be sent to the site around the clock in the shift system. In the vicinity, a rally and evidence unit of the riot police is also being planned. According to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern police, this is mainly used at major events “in which conflicts are to be expected”. The police leadership expects to house around 1,000 police near the site. The Fusion Festival is scheduled to take place from June 26 to 30 this year.

Also, Räumpanzer and water cannons are to stand by the concept of use outside the festival, as well as a group TMÖL (technical measures open and release) – officials who usually cut protests, who have chained themselves in track beds, such as protests against Castortransporte. Even the Bundeswehr should be used: soldiers should build a driveway to the police camp. Civilian police forces would conduct “open and covert education” and social media would be evaluated to “anticipate planned provocations and disabilities of the police operation.”

Source: https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2019-05/fusion-festival-polizeieinsatz-sicherheitskonzept-interne-dokumente