After the controversial chats in the Frankfurt Special Operations Command (SEK), the special units in Hesse are being reorganized. Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) announced on Thursday that the unit as SEK South would in future be subordinate to the Hessian riot police, together with two mobile task forces (MEK), the so-called negotiating group and the already-based evidence and arrest units, the flying squadron as well as the water police. In the future, the agency will be renamed to a “Deployment Presidium”. In the further course of the unit will become a SEK Hessen. The strategically important location in Frankfurt will be retained. The new rooms in the police headquarters have already been occupied - but under new management and only with officers,who have demonstrably not participated in right-wing extremist chats.
Katharina Iskandar
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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Beuth presented the plans on Thursday together with the chairman of the expert commission for the restructuring of the SEK, Stefan Müller, and with the head of the Democracy Center at the University of Marburg, Reiner Becker.
The minister again defended the dissolution of the Frankfurt SEK in June.
He said that the commission of experts had spent the past ten weeks studying the misconduct of the 20 accused officers and the leadership culture of the Frankfurt police headquarters and had come to the conclusion that the resolution was inevitable on this scale.
It was found that the “compass of values has slipped completely in parts of the unit”.
There was “no corrective action from immediate superiors”.
Chats were first published
Beuth also made direct reference to the chats, the contents of which the President of the State Criminal Police Office, Andreas Röhrig, published for the first time.
"When people are scorned because of their main color or because of a disability and women are vilified, then that is completely unacceptable behavior."
Müller named five points that the commission had worked out over the past few weeks. He called them the "five serious undesirable developments". So it came in the chat groups to an "increasing brutality up to punishable content". He also insisted that the old offices in the Frankfurt Presidium were an expression of these developments. The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution had come to the conclusion that there was no clearly right-wing extremist content to be found there. Signs against xenophobia were also found, such as the picture of a smashed swastika. Nevertheless, according to Müller, it is strange that hand grenades and cartridge cases were put on display that there was no distance to “death and killing”.This testifies to a militarized self-perception and exaggeration of one's own group membership.
Wrong developments were not recognized at all or too late
Furthermore, Müller sees gross failures in the development of managers.
A quarter of the civil servants, some of whom are over 45 years old, have been in the unit for more than 15 years, although a longer stay is not planned.
Müller is also critical of the group dynamic processes which, in his opinion, have resulted in many people not reflecting on themselves to this day.
The Frankfurt SEK had not only disparaged itself, as in an anonymous interview recently, about the GSG9, "undoubtedly one of the most powerful special units", but also to the colleagues of the SEK Kassel, which had ensured security in Frankfurt over the past few weeks .
"Anyone who thinks this way and at the same time uses utterances like 'To go into battle' is permanently disqualified from being used in a SEK." Finally, Müller also criticized the fact that these undesirable developments were consistently not recognized or recognized too late.
"Expressed your own guiding culture"
Reiner Becker, who has already dealt with right-wing extremist chat groups in the expert commission on the model of the police, spoke of an “overall impression” that one has to consider in the case of the SEK.
"After the SEK there is nothing more," said Becker.
"That is what makes the unit so special."
In the past few weeks, he has read the chat history, and he has also viewed the 500 or so pictures that were taken in the rooms of the former SEK Frankfurt.
It became clear that the department was “isolated, it expressed its own guiding culture.
Honor, courage, comradeship, pride - paired with sexist, misogynistic views ”.
The poster for the film “300” or the lambda symbol are not in themselves critical. "Very well, however, as a whole, if you know what exactly the symbol stands for." According to Becker, the whole thing becomes even more explosive in connection with the chats. Even if a lot is not criminally relevant, it is about the overall picture. National Socialism is played down and incited against the disabled. It appears that some officials have "placed their identities above the values of others".
Two of the three superiors were investigated for thwarting punishment in the office because they had not prevented the chat - the investigation has since been discontinued. In both cases, Beuth announced an examination where they can be used in the future. “This question will have to be answered on the basis of objective criteria.” This also includes the personality image.