pri.org reports that “Police in the German city of Cologne have admitted they ‘could not cope’ with the sheer number of coordinated sexual assaults and robberies taking place on New Year’s Eve, according to an internal police report. The report has come after a week of shock and outrage in Germany over the scale of the attacks, which also took place on a smaller scale in other cities.” Let’s put a number on that, shall we . . .
More than 120 women reported being attacked or sexually assaulted in Cologne, including instances of rape.
According to witnesses, the violence on New Year’s Eve was coordinated, and may have involved as many as 1,000 men, mostly of Arab or African origin.
Again, this is hardly a local problem. The victim in the photo above lives in Stuttgart. Anyway, for the sake of argument, set aside the religious affiliation or national background of the criminals involved. What’s important here: even in the face of large-scale “coordinated” sexual assault, large swathes of the German people reckon it’s the cops’ responsibility to keep them safe.
Alexandra Eul, a journalist for the German feminist magazine Emma, which is based in Cologne, says that many victims feel angry at the failure of the police to protect victims in the station.
“Police didn’t even recognise that women were being sexually abused. People in Cologne and the rest of Germany are really shocked — the phrase you hear is ‘this is a new quality of crime.’” . . .
Cologne police chief Wolfgang Albers today defended the performance of his force, arguing that “”we were well prepared.”
However, police also admitted that an earlier official description of the atmosphere in Cologne on New Year’s Eve as “relaxed” was inappropriate.
You want inappropriate? Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker reacted to the news with some suggestions for women to help them “avoid rape.”
What’s really inappropriate: law-abiding Germans are disarmed against criminals, terrorist and crazies. This from a Jew whose grandparents were murdered by the Nazis and father barely survived his time as a slave laborer in a Nazi labor camp.