Germany’s Green party has called for police to hire more migrants as part of a package they hope would combat the terror threat and rising crime rate in the country.
The Greens have put forward a package to strengthen the country’s security which includes expanding the police force and introducing stricter weapon laws.
The party’s draft resolution on internal security states that with a high risk of terror and growing number of burglaries, Germany needs more police and for them to be better equipped.
The paper contends that years of redundancies and job cuts at the federal police have left the force with acute staff shortages, leading the Greens to describe it as “outdated”.
The Green party’s draft template says mass surveillance and data retention are no alternative to a larger force and that the police should introduce a migrant quota when hiring.
The draft document argues the police need a “personnel structure” in which the proportion of migrants employed is equal to their proportion across the wider population.
Along with rejecting any “militarisation of internal policy”, meaning granting police extra powers while Germany is on high security alert, the Greens also used the draft document to call for tighter restrictions on weapons.
Although gun legislation in Germany is considered among the strictest in the world the Greens have been vocal recently in calling for further restrictions on the sale of other self-defence items.
Earlier in the year after 1,000 women reported being sexually assaulted in Cologne on New Year’s Eve it emerged that demand for “over the counter” self-defence items like tasers and pepper spray had skyrocketed.
The Greens’ “interior expert”, Irene Mihalic, responded to reports of increased demand with calls for further controls on the items, declaring “[A] weapon is a weapon – the trivialisation of the area covered by the so-called small arms license types must finally come to an end.”