Citizens not only greeted the New Year with New Year's rockets and firecrackers, but also with an alarming level of violence against police officers, firefighters and rescue workers.

In Berlin, the fire brigade was apparently only able to do its job and extinguish lit garbage cans under the protection of the police.

The Berlin police stated that the intensity of the attacks was "not comparable to previous years".

Helpers were also injured in other cities.

No wonder that on the first day of the year calls for tougher penalties for violent offenders are making the rounds.

The police union said, for example, that the penalties should be higher than they are currently.

Because the attacks on emergency services are a "brutalization that we cannot accept," as a representative of the union said.

In fact, these attacks are by no means to be accepted.

But higher penalties will not solve the problem.

The demand may be easy, but the problem runs deeper.

This shows the experience of the past few years.

The legislature has already amended criminal law several times, the group of people who are particularly protected has been expanded and the upper end of the sentence has been increased to five years.

Alone, the perpetrators were not impressed.

Between 2018 and 2021, the number of violent crimes against fire and rescue workers did not decrease despite a higher range of punishment.

At times it even rose significantly.

The Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg has just announced that this form of barbarism is progressing.

What the law says does not deter violent criminals.

convictions do.

An attacker should not care how high the penalty range is if he can assume that he will never be prosecuted anyway.

Instead, perpetrators must quickly feel the consequences.

This succeeds above all by more money flowing into the overburdened investigative authorities.

There needs to be more police officers to identify criminals and more prosecutors to bring them to justice.

And so that judgments are passed quickly, overburdened courts must be staffed with more staff.