Police-run propaganda radio

von Info Bär /Diet Simon - 10.11.2003 14:39
source:  http://de.indymedia.org/2003/11/65486.shtml

The special police troupe was invented by Police Director Hans Reime. He calls this constitutionally at least questionable police activity “offensive public relations work”. It was developed with cooperation by the “social science service of the police”.

For the past three years lies have been concocted there, processed for the press and spread as press releases or in personal conversations by the “press minder”. Police officials also intensively “look after” journalists.

This troupe has its head office in Lüneburg in the complex of buildings of the district government. It is sold to the public primarily with the so-called “conflict managers”. Twelve officers of this troupe, stuck into red first aider jackets that are intended to pretend neutrality, will hang about in pairs between Lüneburg and Gorleben, especially at the few permitted gatherings, and press themselves on journalists.

These are allegedly psychologically especially well-trained officers claimed to be tasked to solve clashes between citizens and the police non-violently. Since they have never done this, can’t or don’t want to do this, in past deployments colleagues in the Lüneburg centre invented bags of success stories and fed them to the press. All of these reports about the two deployments in March and November 2001 proved to be false on later checking.

Also part of the activities is the launch and care of their own Castor deployment police home page, see  http://www.polizei.niedersachsen.de/castor/ .

There, an uncensored discussion forum was also kept during deployments where citizens and police could exchange arguments.

Because in 2001 the whole thing ended in a total argumentation fiasco for the police, all input was wiped in 2002 and a new start attempted. After here, too, the officers found themselves hopelessly on the defensive, as they do in every public discussion event, the forum has now been unceremoniously scrapped altogether.

Already in November 2001 this propaganda troupe had had a new idea: a police van with loudspeakers, with which they drove ahead of the demonstration procession. In Lüneburg, played tasteless music, “informed“ people with (false) statements about the demonstration and so in a clearly unconstitutional way wanted to influence the image of the procession. But determined action by the demo organisers and participants was quickly able to stop the van’s activity.

In November 2002 the troupe gained notoriety for a media release describing in the most dishonourable scandal-rag manner a peaceful demonstration on the Castor rails as a “life-threatening act by insane people”, instead of issuing a neutral press release. They did not mention the dissolution of this demo as “life-saving act of the officers” and the participation in the demonstration of a border policeman in plain clothes.

The activities of the police propaganda unit were accompanied by targeted and massive obstructions of all journalists who eschewed this official “press care”. Several had their press passes torn from them, they were thrown to the ground while working, prevented from moving about and in one case even arrested.

There’s something new again this year, too. Probably because the officers can’t be expected to be involved in this kind of media manipulation, the unit has set up a police radio for the duration of the deployment.

This emerges from a media release by the propaganda unit:  http://www.polizei.niedersachsen.de/castor/presse/presse2003/20031109a.htm which also, as usual, accentuates a good deed by a policeman (which will most probably, as usual, turn out to have been altogether different in the end).

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