BERLIN (AP) — At least 93 police officers were injured and 354 protesters were detained after traditional May Day rallies in Berlin turned violent, the city's top security official said Sunday. More than 20 different rallies took place in the German capital on Saturday and the vast majority of them were peaceful. However, a leftist march of 8,000 people through the city's Neukoelln and Kreuzberg neighborhood, which has seen clashes in past decades, turned violent. Protesters threw bottles and rocks at officers, and burned garbage cans and wooden pallets in the streets. “Violence against police officers and a blind, destructive rage has nothing to do with political protest,” Berlin state interior minister Andreas Geisel said.

At least 93 police officers were injured and 354 protesters were detained after traditional May Day rallies in Berlin turned violent, the city’s top security official said Sunday.

More than 20 different rallies took place in the German capital on Saturday and the vast majority of them were peaceful. However, a leftist march of 8,000 people through the city’s Neukoelln and Kreuzberg neighborhood, which has seen clashes in past decades, turned violent. Protesters threw bottles and rocks at officers, and burned garbage cans and wooden pallets in the streets.

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  • JoinYourLocalOrg [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    This is bad intel on multiple counts.

    At least 93 police officers were injured

    According to what source? The source is the police (or rather the Innenverwaltung, which is part of the Ministry of Interior), they have a habit of inflating the number of police hurt (including everyone of their own who gets tear gassed, who goes to the doctor (cause they have a splitter in their hand) etc.). In one case the number of hurt police was over 200 and after political examination boards were done with it the number was down to four of which three hurt themselves and one literally hurt their fist punching a protester.

    That said this year there were some punches the police had to take.

    a leftist march of 8,000 people

    Try more 25k+ (depending on who you count as actively participating - if just being associated within the protest route it is more 30-50k). Of those course the police is right that of the closed blocks that there were around after the evening the number was more 8k - but that was some time after the protest was declared as ended by the police.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Bristol police in the UK claimed 90 injuries a few weeks ago including broken bones. This turned out to be entirely false when people investigated it.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      A peace march in San Francisco on January 19, 1991, stretching from Dolores Park along the full width of Market Street all the way to Van Ness—about the length of ten or twelve football fields, easily 150,000 people—was reported by KRON-TV and CNN as 25,000. On January 26, 1991, peace advocates launched a massive march on Washington to protest President Bush’s Gulf war. Over a thousand buses filled to capacity with demonstrators from all over the Northeast, South, and Midwest rolled into the city. Tens of thousands of people came by car, Amtrak, and the Washington Metro. During the event itself, marchers tightly packed in broad uneven lines about sixty to seventy across, moving at a brisk pace, took about four hours to pass any given point. Organizers claimed 250,000. But the figure widely reported in the news was 75,000, provided by the unsympathetic Park Police. (It never would have taken four hours for 75,000 to march by.) Even worse were the early CNN reports, which noted that “organizers were hoping for 50,000 but they appear to be well short of that goal.”

      Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti