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German-French border controls tightened as search for Christmas market shooter continues

Following a deadly attack near a Christmas market in Strasbourg on Tuesday evening, the German federal police put up controls at several border crossings from Germany to France.

Published: 12 December 2018 08:39 CET
German-French border controls tightened as search for Christmas market shooter continues
Police in the city of Kehl control all cars going from Germany to France on Tuesday night. Photo: DPA

According to a police spokesperson on Wednesday morning, officers are on duty in the German cities of Kehl, Iffezheim, Breisach and Rheinau in Baden-Württemberg. Commuters and others travelling from Germany to France will likely be faced with waiting times of up to 90 minutes.

It is unclear how long the controls will last. “We are dependent on our colleagues in France. As long as the situation is not cleared up, we will continue to monitor,” the police spokesman said.

The attack in Strasbourg on Tuesday around 8 p.m. near a famous Christmas market in the centre of the city killed three people, according to the Interior Ministry.  It has now been revealed that one of the victims was a tourist from Thailand.

French Deputy Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said a terrorist motive had not yet been determined, in an interview on Wednesday, reported Focus Online. However, that line of inquiry is being investigated. 

Current information details that a further 14 people were injured, eight of them seriously. Among those who have died and been injured “to the best of our knowledge, there are no Germans,” reported the Crisis Reaction Centre of the Federal Foreign Office on Twitter.

The Christmas market is closed Wednesday.

Strasbourg, the seat of the European Parliament, is situated directly on the German border. It is located across from the city of Kehl in western Baden-Württemberg along the Rhine river.

It's not only road traffic, but also public transport that's being checked. This includes the cross-border tram D, which was completely shut down during the night, but is now running again.

According to the police, the pedestrian and cyclist bridge Passerelle des Deux Rives between Kehl and Strasbourg is also being checked.

Asked on French radio whether the suspect could have fled into Germany, Strasbourg’s mayor said that “The border is in principle closed” but that is is still possible, reported FOCUS Online.

Suspect convicted in Germany

According to French media reports, the alleged perpetrator is a 29-year-old man who was born in Strasbourg.

The French Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, had announced last night that the man was known to the police and had already been convicted of crimes in France and Germany. He was also known as a potential threat.

The perpetrator is presumably wounded and on the run and is being searched for by several helicopters and hundreds of police officers.

The shooting happened in the surroundings of the Christmas market, which attracts thousands of tourists from around the world every year.

SEE ALSO: What we know so far about the Stasbourg Christmas market shooting

Castaner did not describe the exact crime scene in more detail, but said the perpetrator had spread “terror” in three different places in the city.

Between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. he had twice exchanged gunfire with soldiers on patrol, and according to media reports he was injured.

The attack that took place in the run up to Christmas has shocked the world.

“We are deeply shocked by the attack in Strasbourg and condemn this cowardly act,” wrote German foreign minister Heiko Maas on Twitter.

“Shocked about the horrible news from Strasbourg,” wrote Steffen Seibert, the spokesman for Angela Merkel, on Twitter. “Whichever motive is behind the shooting: We mourn the dead and are with our thoughts and wishes with the injured.”

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SHOOTINGS

US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success

The US criminologist behind the anti-gang strategy designed to reduce the number of shootings and explosions in Malmö has credited the city and its police for the "utterly pragmatic, very professional, very focused" way they have put his ideas into practice.

Published: 8 March 2021 16:12 CET
US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success
Johan Nilsson/TT

In an online seminar with Malmö mayor Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said implementing his Group Violence Intervention (GVI) strategy had gone extremely smoothly in the city.

“What really stands out about the Malmö experience is contrary to most of the places we work,” he said. “They made their own assessment of their situation on the ground, they looked at the intervention logic, they decided it made sense, and then, in a very rapid, focused and business-like fashion, they figured out how to do the work.”

He said that this contrasted with police and other authorities in most cities who attempt to implement the strategy, who tend to end up “dragging their feet”, “having huge amounts of political infighting”, and coming up with reasons why their city is too different from other cities where the strategy has been a success.

Malmö’s Sluta Skjut (Stop Shooting) pilot scheme was extended to a three-year programme this January, after its launch in 2018 coincided with a reduction in the number of shootings and explosions in the city.

“We think it’s a good medicine for Malmö for breaking the negative trend that we had,” Malmö police chief Stefan Sintéus said, pointing to the fall from 65 shootings in 2017 to 20 in 2020, and in explosions from 62 in 2017 to 17 in 2020.

A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of shootings from 2017 to 2020. Graph: Malmö Police
A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of explosions in the city between 2017 and 2020. Graph: Malmö Police

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In their second evaluation of the programme, published last month, Anna-Karin Ivert, Caroline Mellgren, and Karin Svanberg, three criminologists from Malmö University, reported that violent crime had declined significantly since the program came into force, and said that it was possible that the Sluta Skjut program was partly responsible, although it was difficult to judge exactly to what extent. 

The number of shootings had already started to decline before the scheme was launched, and in November 2019, Sweden’s national police launched Operation Rimfrost, a six-month crackdown on gang crime, which saw Malmö police reinforced by officers from across Sweden.

But Kennedy said he had “very little sympathy” for criminologists critical of the police’s decision to launch such a massive operation at the same time as Sluta Skjut, making it near impossible to evaluate the programme.

“Evaluation is there to improve public policy, public policy is not there to provide the basis for for sophisticated evaluation methodology,” he argued.

“When people with jobs to do, feel that they need to do things in the name of public safety, they should follow their professional, legal and moral judgement. Not doing something to save lives, because it’s going to create evaluation issues, I think, is simply privileging social science in a way that it doesn’t deserve.”

US criminologist David Kennedy partaking in the meeting. Photo: Richard Orange

Sluta Skjut has been based around so-called ‘call-ins’, in which known gang members on probation are asked to attend meetings, where law enforcement officials warn them that if shootings and explosions continue, they and the groups around them will be subject to intense focus from police.

At the same time, social workers and other actors in civil society offer help in leaving gang life.

Of the 250-300 young men who have been involved in the project, about 40 have been sent to prison, while 49 have joined Malmö’s ‘defector’ programme, which helps individuals leave gangs.

Kennedy warned not to focus too much on the number of those involved in the scheme who start to work with social services on leaving gang life.

“What we find in in practice is that most of the impact of this approach doesn’t come either because people go to prison or because they take services and leave gang life,” he said.

“Most of the impact comes from people simply putting their guns down and no longer being violent.”

“We think of the options as continuing to be extremely dangerous, or completely turning one’s life around. That’s not realistic in practice. Most of us don’t change that dramatically ever in our lives.”

He stressed the importance of informal social control in his method, reaching those who gang members love and respect, and encouraging them to put pressure on gang members to abstain from gun violence.

“We all care more about our mothers than we care about the police, and it turns out that if you can find the guy that this very high risk, very dangerous person respects – literally, you know, little old ladies will go up to him and get his attention and tell him to behave himself. And he will.”

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