Germany Suspends 29 Police Officers for Sharing Racist, Far-Right Material on WhatsApp

Twenty-nine German police officers, including a unit leader, have been suspended on suspicion of sharing far-right propaganda in private WhatsApp groups, in the latest extremism scandal to hit the German force.

The messages – which included images of a refugee in a gas chamber, and Black people being shot – were examples of “the most foul and repugnant neo-Nazi, racist and anti-refugee agitation”, said Herbert Reul, Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the western state where the officers were based.

The five chat groups, the oldest of which was started in 2012, were only uncovered when an officer’s mobile was confiscated during a separate investigation. That discovery triggered raids in which police teams searched 34 homes and offices across the state Wednesday.

Most of the suspended officers had worked at the same police precinct in Mülheim an der Ruhr, a city of about 170,000 in the west of the state. Fourteen are likely to be sacked, said Reul, while 11 who actively sent the material are likely to face criminal charges for incitement.

“We have to ask unpleasant questions of ourselves,” Reul said. “Who knew about this? Why was this tolerated for years? By whom?”

Frank Richter, the regional police chief, said that none of the officers had displayed suspicious behaviour, and that he was shocked that none had reported the content to their superiors.

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But Robert Lüdecke, spokesman for the German far-right monitoring group the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, told VICE News that the fact a unit leader was among those suspended highlighted the extent of the problem.

“The problem is so structural that leadership figures are part of the problem instead of solving it,” he said. “There is a lack of independent places where these colleagues can turn to without fearing that they will get into problems themselves because they are the ‘black sheep’ of the unit.”

The case – just the latest in a string of far-right scandals uncovered in the German police in recent years – has renewed scrutiny over the extent of extremist sympathies within the force. While the opposition Greens have called for a review into the subject, top security officials have largely dismissed any suggestion of an endemic issue.

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Steve Alter, a spokesman for federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who holds the police portfolio, warned Wednesday against making “sweeping allegations” against the 300,000-strong police force.

“But of course it’s clear, as the current case shows, that we’re not talking about individuals,” he said. In July, Seehofer scrapped a planned study into racial profiling by the police, saying it wasn’t required, despite the government's integration commissioner insisting it was a necessary step.

Lüdecke said there were clear indications of a wider structural problem that required a broader solution.

“As long as … individual policemen are punished, but the networks behind them are ignored, it is to be feared that any right-wing extremist policeman will one day become a right-wing terrorist,” he said.

“We are talking about a group of people who are trained in the use of weapons and can easily get hold of weapons and ammunition. This should be reason enough to finally draw some really serious conclusions.”