A Surveillance Failure at the Frankfurt Central Railway Station

As I reported last week, an Eritrean pushed two people in front of a train in the railway station in Frankfurt, killing one of them. Now it emerges that there is no surveillance footage of the crime: the camera aimed at the platform in question experienced a technical failure.

Many thanks to MissPiggy for translating excerpts from this article from FOCUS Online:

Security camera was defective: Security breakdown during platform attack in Frankfurt

Reporter Axel Spilcker
August 7, 2019

On the morning of July 29, when a 40-year-old Eritrean pushed a mother and her eight-year-old son in front of a arriving ICE [train] on Platform 7, a surveillance breakdown occurred at Frankfurt Central Station. According to information made available to FOCUS Online, the camera that was to record what happened on the platform was defective.

A second camera was aimed solely at the travel hall of the terminus. Consequently, the crime could not be recorded, but only the escape by the suspected murderer. While the mother was able to save herself, any help for her son came too late.

The spokeswoman for the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office did not want to comment on this breakdown. Only this much: “We have video recordings, and these are now being evaluated.” The public prosecutor did not want to disclose what exactly the recordings contained.

Similar mishap in 2012 in Cologne

Security gaps have been a major problem in rail traffic for years. A similar incident occurred during the failed bomb attack at Bonn Central Station by an Islamist in December 2012 on Track 1.

The seven cameras of Deutsche Bahn did not have the platform in view. Ultimately, investigators secured footage of the perpetrator only with the help of a neighboring McDonald’s branch. Only the camera in the fast-food restaurant on platform 1 had recorded the wanted person. At that time, the then-Federal Minister of the Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich (CSU), had pushed for the expansion of video surveillance in public places, but had failed due to resistance from his liberal coalition partners and the opposition in the Bundestag.

7 thoughts on “A Surveillance Failure at the Frankfurt Central Railway Station

  1. Sounds like an excuse to increase surveillance across the Fourth Reich; especially of AfD subversives and their supporters.

    The other likely explanation is that surveillance exists but the neo-gestapo/stazi types will not admit to it’s existence because the potential to cause violent protests or riots is just too great of a threat. And besides, without video evidence they can get the african off easier.

  2. “A Surveillance Failure at the Frankfurt Central Railway Station”

    Cameras were not working! If it were working the crime scene would have been missing. If it were not missing, the police would have lost it. If it were not lost, the judge would rule “there is not enough evidence to convict him”. If he were convicted he would have received a slap on the wrist, and could not be deported because of something very noble: his human rights. The above can only created not by a barbaric undemocratic state, but by a civilized country ruled by laws made by honorables.

  3. Another scum , another lies by DDR . Communism, they don’t have witnesses? Lots of them where that time on the Bahnhof , despicable..

  4. It does seem to happen a lot doesn’t it. Security camera’s that are failing at the “moment supreme”
    I remember a little happening on the square in front of the Amsterdam Central Station in May 2017.
    A motorist (of the usual persuasion) ran down eight tourists just exiting the station.
    The explanation given was he was suffering from a black out due to “low blood sugar level” because of ramadan.
    “But what about the CCTV images” you say, the square is plastered with seven or so camera’s. Well it so happened all camera’s were offline at the very moment due to “maintenance issues” So the incident was chalked up as an “accident”.

    It never seizes to amaze me we humans could put men on the moon, and get them back in one piece by using 1960’s technology. Also using the same technology we launched two space probes, Voyager I and Voyager II who already have left our solar system but are still transmitting data back to earth after all these years.

    Yet building reliable CCTV systems today seems a bridge to far.
    Go figure.

    • CCTV “failed” at Stockwell tube station when the Metropolitan Police killed a Brazilian electrician for the crime of being mistaken for a Pakistani descent failed suicide bomber.

      CCTV seems also to have “failed” in Walmart, El Paso and in Dayton recently because there is none of it publicly available.

      Yes, I agree. Reliable CCTV systems appear to be an impossibility, except to browbeat the general population into submission.

  5. No technology is perfect. I was chairman of a jury about ten years ago (tip: if you don’t want to be elected, don’t submit questions to the judge, and don’t go to the toilet when the jury retires!)

    The (alleged) perpetrators robbed a bank where the CCTV wasn’t working; after we convicted them, we learned this wasn’t their first offence.

  6. It is a great mystery to me why CCTV footage always appears grainy and in black and white. In this particular case, there is no footage. Reminds of how they didn’t have footage of the attacks in Cologne either. Strange given the German predilection for having things working properly.

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