From Surveyor to Servant: The Democratisation of the Police (With Reference to the Brandenburg Police, Germany)

Chapter 1 - The Volkspolizei of the German Democratic Republic and the Process of Change after the Wende

Under the state system of the GDR, the Deutsche Volkspolizei (DVP), or simply Volkspolizei as it is more frequently known was the 'Organ der einheitlichen sozialistischen Staatsmacht der DDR', whose task it was to guarantee, to strengthen and to protect worker and peasant authority (the GDR was often called the 'Worker and Peasant State') through public order and security and which, together with the public, ensured the enforcement of justice and law. The DVP was under the control of the Minister des Innern and the head of the DVP. The last law regarding the organization of the police in the GDR was passed in 1968 and stated that the aversion of danger was not the only role of the police, but also the protection of socialist achievements, of free life and the creative work of mankind. Welfare work did not figure as a role of the police under the socialist system. Police laws effectively elevated members of the Volkspolizei to executives of state power and the evidence suggests that the police viewed itself as such.

VoPos, as the officers of the DVP were commonly known, were themselves privileged members of society. They had a flat, a holiday retreat, their own medical care, kindergartens and shops. Separated from the rest of society, it can be said that they were generally disliked or ridiculed in private by the public. In the area now making up Brandenburg there were twenty thousand police officers: admittedly too many, although some would maintain that too many is preferable to too few, as would seem to be the case today.

In towns and communities, order and security were the responsibility of Abschnittsbevollmächtigte (ABVs); agents of the DVP at a local level, who worked in their own specific areas. This arrangement is regarded by the PDS-LL as a positive aspect of the GDR's police system: an aspect which they feel should have been kept in operation in some form or other after the Wende, since ABVs had close contact with the public and therefore an in-depth knowledge of any problems. Indeed, this view is supported by certain policemen today. It should be noted that the newly-created Posten- und Revierdienst is in fact supposedly a modern version of the ABV system, although this still needs time to fully develop.

At first glance, it would appear that crime rates in the GDR were much lower than those of today, but as State Secretary Dr. Werner Ruckriegel stated in June 1992,

Totalitäre Regime haben es leichter, Gewalt und Kriminalität niedrig zu halten, erst recht, wenn das Staatsgebiet von Mauer und Stacheldraht umgeben wird.

The fact is that under the GDR system, many crimes were not made public. The theft of personal property, for instance, was not considered as real crime and did not register as such in official statistics. This is an important omission, since one third to a half of what are today considered as criminal offences were therefore ignored in the GDR crime figures. Nevertheless, the PDS-LL maintains that many more serious crimes in the GDR were dealt with and not merely registered, as it alleges they are today.

In the eyes of the Neues Forum / Argus faction in Potsdam, the change in the police in the town after the Wende came without a great deal of fuss: even during the spectacular dissolution of the MfS, or Stasi. The path of change in reality would indeed seem to have been reasonably smooth and well organized. Following the signing of the Einigungsvertrag in August 1990, the justice system of the FRG was transferred into the newly-created Bundesländer. A transient law on police operation in the new Länder came into force until the individual Länder had ratified their own police laws. To assist the new Länder in the difficult task of taking on board a totally new and foreign system, a series of partnerships between the old and new Länder were created. Brandenburg received and still receives help from Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW) in this task. The police took on a new, democratic role in the prevention and combat of crime and the KI branch of the Volkspolizei, responsible for politically relevant police activity and cursed like the MfS, seemingly dissolved itself without the otherwise usual public supervision. By the end of July 1991. all the new Länder had passed police laws of their own, Sachsen being the first to do this, taking its structures very closely from those of Baden-Württemberg. This simple transfer of structures from west to east Germany has come under much criticism, maybe rightly so, but it is difficult to conceive of any other possibilities for the new Länder under the circumstances. There is, alternatively, a strong case for saying that the opportunity of correcting faults in the police systems of the old Länder was not really grasped, before their adoption by the new Länder.

There were and still are of course a great wealth of problems which came about after the Wende. From the day of reunification, the 3rd October 1990, every citizen could call on Federal law for aid. Naturally, this made life very difficult for police officers and public alike in the new Länder. It would have been over-expectant to believe that officers in the east could have immediately gained the knowledge of legal processes that their colleagues in the west learn in two and a half years of basic training.

Doubt in police competence runs high in east Germany, not only amongst the public, but also amongst security experts, the main police trade union (the GdP) and police officers themselves. The Federal Chairman of the GdP demands at least sixty thousand more policemen and has not ruled out the possibility of strike action. The high rise in crime figures and the number left unsolved has not helped restore confidence. In Leipzig, within one year, the number of reported robberies rose 198 percent, whilst cases of serious theft increased a massive 540 percent^*. To many people, it now seems that the role of a policeman is merely to fill in a form for the insurance company after a break-in. Checking for clues and follow-up investigation seem to be procedures of the past.

Violent crime has also increased since the Wende. Youth clubs, pubs, discos and even police stations have been targets for hooligans. Again, a shortage in police numbers and a lack of equipment seem to be the main problems. Berlin is the exception here in terms of ratio of police officers to citizens. Police numbers in Berlin, which are so high because of the large numbers of police stationed in East Berlin until reunification, could easily be halved without giving rise to security problems^*.

The lack of quality police equipment in the east of Germany is slowly being resolved, but this has not prevented such typical comments as this, from a law student:

Die Taxifahrer in den neuen Bundesländern sind stellenweise technisch besser ausgestattet (bessere Autos. besserer Funk und größere Kollegialität) als die ordentliche Polizei.

Indeed, there have been cases of taxi drivers apprehending criminals and police officers confronting rampagers during riots with nothing more than their normal police shirts and without any kind of riot protection equipment.

Despite the shortages in police numbers, authorities have had to be careful when recruiting people who served with the police in the GDR. According to the Einigungsvertrag, only those who worked directly with the Stasi can be dismissed without problem. This has not prevented small elements of the MfS being taken over into the new force. Many important police files were destroyed during the Wende, making the individual assessment of an officer's past activities very difficult. Being too 'choosy' about an officer's past can also be dangerous, owing to shortages in numbers. Some workers in the previously mentioned KI department of the DVP were well-educated people of high experience. It was clearly difficult to simply discard such potential. In any case, the criteria for what is considered an 'unacceptable past' differs between the new Länder. Thüringen and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern decided to remove all old MfS bodies, although there may have been exceptions to the rule. In Sachsen, 400 members of the KI kept their jobs after the Wende. The Innenminister of Sachsen stated that he would have gladly fired all former VoPos, because they were all cogs in the machine of the SED, but such action was impossible and unimaginable. At the same time, he emphasizes that "es gab nicht 17 Millionen Widerstandskämpfer in der DDR^" and that all ex-GDR citizens have changed in recent times.

To ease the decision of choosing those officers who would be permitted to continue working, a series of questionnaires was distributed by the Gemeinsames Landeskriminalamt (GLKA) to ex-VoPos between December 1990 and March 1991, for the assessment of their previous activities. 10,499 of these were evaluated by a Personalkommission. In Brandenburg at first examination of previous MfS workers, about seven hundred were considered 'doubtful'. In a second examination, 220 were passed, despite having worked in 'critical areas'. In addition, forty six Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter of the MfS were accepted. A mass dismissal of police was ruled out as impossible.

The retraining of former VoPos is not easy. For such officers, retraining firstly means going 'back to school' to learn the concepts of justice, division of power and monopoly of power. All theoretical knowledge has to be learnt from first principles. In the FRG, a three year compulsory training was (and still is) necessary before becoming an officer. In the GDR, a five month training period was the norm. Often, long-serving soldiers were taken on from the army. VoPos were accordingly trained and armed on more of a military basis and had different ways of dealing with demonstrations, which explains why police authorities today are sometimes wary of sending former VoPos into demonstrations.

The individual ex-VoPos are often shocked by the basic rights enjoyed by citizens (and themselves) and by the fact that their first duty is to the order of justice and only secondly to their superiors: that they can act against an order, should it contradict the order of justice. The 'trainees' learn how arresting and searching somebody touches the fundamental rights of that citizen and that there is a set process for dealing with 'breaches of the law'. It would be rather naive to expect that all VoPos could simply be converted through lectures and seminars alone: practical experience is required. The first 'fresh' police officers (those who were not previously active in the GDR) are not expected in Brandenburg until early 1994, but this does not seem to matter: motivation is high in seminars and it is noted that the 'students' appear to have become more at ease in their new situation. Many are simply content when they receive their new uniforms and have the chance to discard their old image.

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