Organized crime: “Members of the criminal clan have changed their strategy”

KThe special commission “Clan” of the Essen police recently made it clear with a spectacular mission that they will be needed for a long time. On December 5, a large contingent of Hundred officials prevented a meeting between two warring clans who had apparently agreed to mediate. The scene had provided occasions time and time again in recent weeks.

They were fights in the street, a search warrant was issued for collective robbery with the help of special units, before there was a search of several buildings in the city area with provisional arrests.

Operations show that clan crime is an enduring problem, that it is a fight against solidified structures. But, seen another way, it is about the successes of this special commission, called “Special Structural Organization – Clan Plan of Action BAO” in technical jargon, which has been dedicated to this area for two years.

“Something has changed. It seems our tactic is working. We are on the right track with the BAO Clan,” says Essen Police Chief Frank Richter WELT. Before the creation of the BAO, there were so-called riots almost every day. months, then dozens of people would come together out of nowhere when, for example, police officers recorded a traffic accident.

The officers were hampered and threatened in their work. There were complaints from citizens that the tuned PS machines were parked in the second and third rows. “The clan members wanted to externally document that the ‘street’ belongs to us,” says Richter.

“The scene is very unsafe”

The police now show a greater reluctance. The BAO leader, who for security reasons does not want to be mentioned by name, attributes it to the intensive missions. “The scene is very unstable, which is expressed in less agitation. The number of complaints from citizens has decreased significantly. Crime in public places is decreasing and the sense of security has improved significantly. “

The clans were even more cooperative when it came to organizing funerals. “We are not so naive as to believe that crimes will no longer be committed. Members of the criminal clan have changed their strategy. They have become much more cautious. A massive police presence will be necessary for a long time, ”says the director of BAO.

In Essen alone live around 15,000 members of Turkish-Arab family clans, most of whom are said to be the so-called Mhallamiye Kurds. They have their roots in southeastern Turkey and fled to Germany during the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990.

According to the police, only a small minority of the 15,000 people, about 600 people, are criminals and are responsible for an average of 800 crimes per year. It deals with drug dealing, money laundering, gambling, social benefits and tax fraud, illegal possession of weapons, serious assault, territorial domination and defamation. “Our police measures are only directed against the criminal part of the clan families. Most families are not affected by our actions, ”said the director of BAO.

As the second largest city in the Ruhr area, Essen is a clan hotspot, similar to Berlin and Bremen. The structure at NRW is much more complex, as a situation report from the State Criminal Police Office shows. When the overview was released in May 2019, the researchers had initially identified 104 family clans across the country.

There are now 111 living mainly in the metropolitan area of ​​the Ruhr area, but they have also moved to neighboring sparsely populated regions. Problems with criminal clan structures have been known for several years. Police authorities, for example in Essen and Duisburg, made isolated initial efforts to take action. Only after the change of government in 2017 did the black and yellow state government make it a state focus after North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) issued a “zero tolerance strategy”.

The concentration of the State Criminal Police Office on surnames helped to rebuild the structures and create a complete overview, even if this carries the risk of stigmatization. In the case of clan crime, “the common family or ethnic origin is consciously included in the commission as a connecting component that promotes the commission of the crime or hinders the investigation,” as described by the NRW Ministry of the Interior.

“We know their rules of the game”

Police felt in the fall that such an approach is politically vulnerable when an internal clan brochure came to light during a national controversy over allegations of racism among police, especially in Essen.

The Essen police then released the brochure to show that the content was not problematic from their point of view.

Among other things, he says: “At this point, a constant demarcation between clan members who appear as criminals and those who are not must be dispensed with.” Basic thought patterns are often anchored in family members who are not criminal suspects, because even if family members are aware of the crime, they remain silent.

On the other hand, attention is paid to the differentiation in the brochure: it goes without saying that all the considerations and measures set out here refer to members of the criminal clan and are not a guide in the sense of ethnic profiling.

Police Chief Richter cannot understand the criticism of the content. He emphasizes that the booklet is scientifically developed and is intended to be helpful during operations. “As a police officer, we focus solely on the criminal part of the clan members and thus learn their rules of the game and their culture,” emphasizes Richter. The BAO Clan is in constant contact with colleagues in Berlin, Bremen and also with the Swedish police, where the clan’s problem is much more dramatic.

Richter notes that there has been a lack of sufficient coherence in policy in recent years because there have long been fears that such an approach could be understood as racism. “But the task of the police is to protect themselves from dangers and prosecute crimes,” explains Richter.

It is also a small-scale approach that NRW Home Secretary Reul coined as the “1000 puncture strategy”. According to the BAO, it controls 300 properties, 275 of which do not refer to clan names. There are about 200 missions a year with hundreds. This includes regular raids on shisha bars in Essen, some of which are used as havens for criminals and for money laundering. Sometimes only a few kilos of duty-free tobacco are confiscated.

Police Chief Richter emphasizes that these small successes are important too. “We have to be present and make it clear that we will not let petty crime get away with it. Some hits are more spectacular than they seem, ”says Richter.

In one case, for example, the city administration found that 82 people in one household had given incorrect addresses and received Hartz IV benefits without justification. This resulted in damages of around 50,000 euros per month. “That is socially harmful behavior. We cannot allow such looting of social systems. “

New turf wars between criminal gangs

An essential principle in the fight against clan crime is the creation of networks of different authorities. In the opinion of the president of the police, Richter, it is convenient and decisive that the most diverse departments work together and bring the desks together. “The police now work closely with the prosecutor, tax offices, customs and local authorities.”

There are many different crimes, criminal offenses, tax crimes, social fraud. According to Richter, it would be much easier if the data could be exchanged more easily. “When fighting clans, it is clear that data protection also protects perpetrators.”

In North Rhine-Westphalia, the police note that the clan problem is getting complicated. The LKA warned at an early stage that new extended families of Iraqi and Syrian descent wanted to compete with the existing Turkish-Lebanese scene. The corresponding clashes apparently broke out in Essen in November. In Berlin, the security authorities record that Chechen groups are breaking into the criminal arena.

Essen Police Chief Richter cautions against viewing clan crime as a temporary phenomenon: “Anyone who believes that those structures that have entrenched themselves over the years can be removed in a short time is wrong. We will need staying power. “