Shot fired at 14-year-old in Munich: police union rejects racism allegations
Following a police shooting of a 14-year-old asylum seeker in Munich, the police union has vigorously rejected accusations of racism.
Shot in Schwabing: GdP calls racism allegation "an affront"
Following the shooting of a 14-year-old in Munich's Schwabing district, the Police Union (GdP) in Bavaria has rejected racism allegations against the officers involved. As reported by WELT, the regional association simultaneously warned against prejudging the officers deployed.
The youth — a pupil with Turkish nationality and Kurdish heritage — was on a public street carrying a deceptively realistic-looking airsoft pistol when a plainclothes officer opened fire on him. The 14-year-old was seriously wounded. On the following weekend, around one hundred people demonstrated against the operation and accused the police of racism.
GdP state chairman Florian Leitner sharply contradicted these allegations: "This allegation leaves me speechless and is an affront! The origin or nationality of a suspect is completely irrelevant in a life-threatening operational situation." That a 14-year-old was hit made the case particularly tragic — but changed nothing about the basic situation facing the officers deployed.
"A deceptively realistic-looking airsoft or replica weapon cannot be distinguished from a real firearm in a dynamic operational situation," Leitner explained. "Our colleagues cannot wait to see whether shots are actually fired. By then it is too late." Anyone who nonetheless accused the police of racism "distorts reality — or exploits the situation to gain some kind of advantage from this tragic event".
Conflicting accounts of what happened
According to police, the pupil from the Miesbach district, who was accompanied by a girl of roughly the same age, was handling the pistol on an open street. When plainclothes officers ordered him to drop the weapon, he turned towards the officers with the weapon in his hand — whereupon an officer opened fire.
The boy's mother gave a different version to München.TV: her son had probably not grasped the situation correctly, immediately raised his arms and called out that the weapon was a toy. That was when the shot was fired. The woman spoke in a Kurdish dialect.
On Thursday, the Munich Greens and the Kurdish Centre Munich published yet another differing account: the pupil had already lowered the weapon when the shot was fired. The police flatly deny this. According to the police report, the airsoft pistol bore a deceptively close resemblance to a Beretta 92 in nine-millimetre calibre. The GdP emphasised that every instance of police firearms use must be comprehensively and independently investigated.
Political calls for stricter weapons regulations
According to police, the youth was initially estimated by officers and witnesses to be considerably older. He had entered Germany in 2023 together with his parents and had filed an asylum application, which was subsequently rejected; deportation was threatened. He was already known to police due to a separate incident.
In response to the incident, the Munich city council factions the Greens/Rosa Liste and the SPD called for the city to campaign at federal and state level and with the German Association of Cities for stricter weapons regulations. Toys, airsoft weapons and comparable weapons should no longer be permitted to be sold if they cannot be immediately distinguished from real firearms on the basis of size, shape and design.
Source: WELT