I don’t pretend to be an expert on crime in Germany. I lived there for two years as a young Military Policeman. I had many occasions to work with the German Polizei and developed quite a respect for them. As we used to say at the time “Herman-the-German don’t screw around!”

You didn’t want to get on the bad side of a German policeman. He was more likely to solve lifes little problems with his nightstick than to make an arrest. You see, the arrest involves paperwork!

On the other hand, they had to be aggressive. They carried little .32 caliber Walthers in those days. Those had the stopping power of a bee-sting so it was no wonder that one of them always seemed to feel he needed to take the H&K MP-5 submachinegun with him everytime he got out of the car. I arrived moments after a shooting at the Bahnhof (train station) once. A Nigerian bank robber armed with a Comm-bloc pistol sprouted three holes in his back in the middle of the station. The Polizei who had fired was irritated…now he had to clean the sub-gun!

I left after two years of watchng Germans slice and shoot each other (and run over with cars, and club with blunt objects, etc.) and several years later I hear that the Polizei does away with the .32s in favor of SIG 9mm autos. Now I read this today from Frankfurt:

>>>According to the interior minister, far-right crimes ranging from robbery to murder jumped by 34 percent from 1999……Anti-Semitic crimes surged by 69 percent to 1,378, while crimes against foreigners rose 57 percent to 3,594, the ministry said.<<<

It’s almost impossible to own a firearm legally there…at that time there were a few people licensed to own .22 target pistols and that was about it. I got permission to shoot my privately owned (bought through the Military Rod & Gun Club) S&W Model 29 at the Polizei range once…scared the crap out of those German cops when that howitzer went off.

Well, the point is that crime is still, apparently, going up, the cops feel they need more firepower and the citizens can’t own anything for protection.