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Zurich city police were criticized for failing to resolve a closing critics’ rally for more than an hour on Saturday. Now the police leadership is distancing itself from the decision of the responsible operations chief.
A protester at Sechseläutenplatz last Saturday in Zurich.
Rarely has a police officer been so clearly criticized for his own leadership. In a Monday message, the city police wrote: “The guidelines of the Zurich city police commander were not properly implemented on Saturday afternoon, May 9, 2020, at Sechseläutenplatz.” With this, the city police admit to mistakes in dealing with a rally of lockdown critics and publicly fired their own employee.
Around 2 p.m., more than a hundred people had gathered at Sechseläutenplatz to protest against the Federal Council’s measures to combat the coronavirus. The mission had only ended at 4 p.m. This was after the city police cracked down on any expression eight days earlier, on May 1.
City police now write that Commander Daniel Blumer had discussed the operation Saturday morning with the operations administration and “discovered that the situation in this case had been incorrectly evaluated by the operations administration.”
On the one hand, the response was too late, on the other hand, the commander’s guidelines were not properly implemented. “Participants in the prohibited event should have been asked immediately to end the event and leave the plaza. The police should have verified, directed and shown people who had not followed the instructions to leave the scene.
The Zurich City Police constantly implements the ban on meetings and events that the Federal Council implements and will continue to tolerate no events and meetings. The city police call on the population to comply with and respect the guidelines of the Federal Council for the protection of people and their health.
