The following report by Egri Nök was published earlier at Vlad Tepes in a slightly different form.
Tuesday morning at rush hour in Munich main train station: Police overpower a knife-carrying man. Photo: Joerg Voelkerling
Germany: Move On, Nothing to See Here
by Egri Nök
Munich — Tuesday morning, between all the commuters and tourists, a man with a knife prompted a police operation inside the main train station. This isn’t anything special anymore, it is the new German normal. Someone who just happened to be there wrote on Facebook,
“Crazy, all the tourists were panicking, and the Germans were totally ignoring it like nothing was going on.”
Germany has seen a recent surge in violent crime and in knife violence, a discipline not long ago practically unknown to Germans.
For the first time ever, “due to the increase of the intensity of violence”, Berlin police just issued a total ban on carrying any dangerous objects on the subway between 8pm and 6 in the morning. Normally, you can carry small knives like Swiss army knives, and pepper spray.
No pepper spray for the ladies allowed after 8pm. This is not helpful.
Last month passing through Munich, I had to sit in that train station for a number of hours. I did not have my nose in my phone, I was alert and looking around the whole time as it felt and looked almost like I was in Turkey, not Western Europe.
Gretel:
Sadly, de facto, you were in Turkey, not “Western Europe”, a concept which is increasingly ceasing to exist.
As you point out, the German police are acting with typical Germanic efficiency: in the face of rising violence, make sure the law abiding have no means of self-defence. Sounds like good sense to me, what could possibly go wrong?
People who are going to use pepper spray, or knives, or “dangerous objects” with criminal intent, will still carry them. Taking away pepper spray means any male aggressor is being given automatic physical advantage over a female if they both are unarmed.
I seriously cannot fathom this rule. To take away small knives, ok even given most people don’t know how to use one in defence and they are easily used offensively, but pepper spray? I can only think they want to give the impression that they have the situation contained.
In the UK pepper spray is banned…..so now there are non offensive marker sprays that colour an asailants face red… so he/she can be more easily traced… later.
Gretel, please be assured: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Okay, so people using the subway at night are not allowed to carry protection of any sort. So the only way to be safe in future will be to herd together in large packs, preferably with lots of men. Perhaps the women could cover their faces too so that the prettier ones don’t arouse the desires of strange men.
These cities that rely on public transport to move large numbers of people around to function as city, could very quickly cease to function when citizens are scared to use the service. That is probably already beginning.
“Berlin police just issued a total ban on carrying any dangerous objects on the subway between 8pm and 6 in the morning.”
Problem solved! Actually, the problem is not solved until Germany and the rest of the West seal their borders and begin deportations of the feral Islamic problem.
Closeup, a knife is at least as deadly as a pistol. By having to overpower the knife-wielder, rather than shooting him, the police are banking on the assumption that they will not make a single mistake. If you lose your grip at the wrong time, or slip, it is sufficient opportunity for the knife-wielder to kill you or your colleague.
There was a case in Chicago, where a knife-wielding teen charged a group of police and was, perfectly legitimately, shot. But the city coughed up a large settlement to the aggrieved parents. The assumption, I guess, is that the life of a knife-wielding minority is at least as valuable as the life of a police officer in good standing.