The Kottbusser Tor in Kreuzberg is one of the most notorious places in Berlin. The police register thousands of crimes there every year. Now this crime hotspot is to have its own police station – a project that the former SPD interior senator Andreas Geisel had already pushed and that is now being pushed by his party colleague and successor Iris Spranger.
According to information from the Berliner Zeitung, the police registered 2,309 crimes there in the last quarter of last year alone. These include 264 cases of minor or serious bodily harm, 61 offenses that fall under the heading “coercion, deprivation of liberty, threats” and 93 cases of robbery. Pickpockets are also common there: the police assign 455 such offenses to the Kottbusser Tor.
In the overall balance, that is 152 more offenses than in the same quarter of the previous year – but only at first glance, because the numbers fell in other areas, such as theft. Because the largest increase in the statistics is the 758 registered drug offenses (304 more than in the same quarter of the previous year), followed by 216 violations of residence and asylum laws, of which the law enforcement officers counted only 76 in the same period of the previous year. Drug and residence violations belong to the so-called control offenses and are only uncovered by the appropriate police presence. In addition, when checking a suspected dealer, it sometimes turns out that he has no right of residence in Germany.
198 arrests last year at Kottbusser Tor
The police have massively increased their presence at the “Kotti” in recent years. Throughout the past year, the police have doubled the number of hours they worked and identity checks compared to the previous year. She was able to almost quadruple the number of arrests to 198.
There is all the more discussion at the police headquarters about where a permanent guard could be installed – whether as a new building or in rented rooms. A decision is still pending, said a police spokeswoman on Thursday. At the “Kotti” crime hotspot, a permanent guard could make sense, says Benjamin Jendro from the police union.
To accommodate the staff, you need more than 300 square meters of space plus sanitary facilities and parking space. “Existing properties on site are ruled out for a variety of reasons, so we would favor a corresponding new building directly on Reichenberger Straße,” says Jendro. “But if you don’t just want to be present, but also want to fight crime seriously, you need criminal police expertise and operational staff on site in addition to a 24/7 security guard. We’re talking about at least 65 colleagues who have to be found without the other local directorates continuing to lose staff.”
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