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But Arndt often finds herself convincing clients not to file charges. She knows too well that it’s the same story time and again. The young woman she recently defended faced an all-to-common experience: after filing a complaint about being punched in the face by a policeman during a demonstration, the girl was herself charged for allegedly kicking the policeman first. “There’s always the risk of the whole thing backfiring and the victims ending up with proceedings against them,” Arndt says.

“A climate of impunity”

Amnesty International’s findings support Arndt’s experiences: “There’s a climate of impunity,” concludes a upcoming report by the human rights association. “It starts with the investigation not fulfilling human rights standards,” says its police expert Katharina Spiess. Having examined a number of cases across Germany, AI found that investigations are especially slow in cases of police violence. It even found cases where the same policeman who was charged also investigated the case. According to AI, it would help if Germany finally passed a law on Kennzeichnungspflicht (mandatory identification), which would require police officers to display their name or an ID number on their uniform. “Our research has shown that many investigations come to a halt because you can’t identify the officer at fault,” Spiess says.

But even if Kennzeichnungspflicht finally comes about (so far, the police union has blocked it by arguing that it would just lead to an increase in arbitrary charges and cases of revenge), something besides identification makes it difficult to take cases of police violence to court: Sven Lüders of Humanistische Union calls this the “Mauer des Schweigens” or “wall of silence”. Police, he says, rarely testify against one another – for obvious reasons. There is still a huge amount of Korpsgeist (esprit de corps) in the German police: reporting a colleague could prompt mobbing and discrimination. The Humanistische Union has therefore been fighting for an independent police evaluator for years – someone who could be a neutral contact person for police officers who witness the misconduct of colleagues. The HU is working on getting it into the Berlin government and ultimately enforced by law.

Tit-for-tat response

When cases of police violence make it to court, it’s almost always the same game, Arndt says. “Police officers are just considered better witnesses. Judges very rarely doubt the word of a policeman.” On top of that, the police are specially trained in court procedures: on how to give correct, convincing testimony and so on. Arndt also believes that police testimonies are often rehearsed. “You can tell from the words being used in their statements,” she says. But it’s difficult to prove, and too many judges are not really interested.

When reached by EXBERLINER, Martin Steltner, spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor’s office, dismissed Arndt’s criticism. “We investigate cases of police violence as thoroughly as any other crime,” he says. And when asked why not a single one of the 600 cases of assault filed against police officers in 2008 ended in a conviction, he counters by explaining that the statistics don’t say how many of these charges are acts of revenge by criminals wanting to take a swipe at the police. “According to evaluations made by the police, the majority of the charges are tit-for-tat-responses.” Still, only the opinion of independent experts would make this claim really believable. And the stats don’t account for the

many, many cases in which victims are dissuaded from filing charges in the first place. “First, you don’t know who to turn to,” says Nadja. “Many lawyers are not interested, or else are… in the wrong way: ‘How much are you ready to spend on this?’ asked the first one I talked to! And even if you can afford a lawyer, most will discourage you from attempting anything. The sad truth is it’s much easier to forget all about it, and move on as if nothing happened.”

Sarah-Jane never heard back from the police, nor did she get a letter from the BVG. But she will never forget that day when she was handcuffed the first time in her life – in Berlin, Germany.