Climate activists have been blocking the streets for days. Videos showing angry drivers trying to pull the blockers off the asphalt are circulating on the Internet. Employees of the Berliner Stadtreinigung (BSR), who also helped out on Monday, now got into trouble. A BSR spokesman considers it unjustified to move the blockers off the road themselves. “The right way would have been to call the police to end the road blockade. We will investigate the matter and evaluate the incident with the employees involved.”
The police are also checking reports against the BSR people. “Pulling blockers off the road is the job of the police,” explains a spokesman.
Not everyone sees it that way. For example, the former Berlin MP Marcel Luthe, who recently founded the “Good Governance Union”, which, among other things, courts the BSR employees. “Anyone who shows moral courage like their colleagues and opposes these criminals must not be bullied by an ideologically partisan employer, but deserves thanks and solidarity. In such cases, our members naturally have union legal protection.”
Luthe gets help from the Network Critical Judges and Public Prosecutors. She is noticed, among other things, by loud criticism of the Corona measures. On its website, the association declares itself to be “politically neutral”. Its board member Pieter Schleiter, who is a judge at the Berlin Regional Court, refers to the case law of the Federal Court of Justice, which was confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2011. According to this, the demonstrators of coercion of the following road users make themselves punishable as soon as a second vehicle is blocked by the first stopping vehicle. “Therefore, these blocked road users may also practice self-defence or emergency assistance as civilians without punishment by simply carrying the demonstrators off the street without further violence in order to allow traffic to flow again.” arriving police, is not called into question by this, he says. In self-defence, the mildest means must be used, i.e. carrying away.
According to their own statements, the police have already initiated at least two procedures for dangerous bodily harm: Two drivers had carried away a climate protector and dropped him roughly on the sidewalk. According to the police, there are 45 procedures against blockers for coercion, six for dangerous interference in road traffic and 35 for resisting law enforcement officers. Seven people were taken into custody by court order.