It's no secret that the police force in general is stretched to their limits, with overtime work skyrocketing since the pandemic. And the current conservative First Minister, Markus Söder, is doing nothing to ease their burden. Trying to come across as Germany’s toughest law and order politician he has introduced various rules and regulations in Bavaria to counteract the new law legalising Cannabis use in Germany. From the start the law’s supporters had stressed that the biggest advantage of the new law would be its positive impact on the police and the courts, that the legalisation of Cannabis would reduce their workload considerably and allow them to focus on more pressing problems. No such luck in Bavaria, it seems. The new rules and regulations are in part so complicated they will be almost impossible to enforce, and having to enforce them will mean more work for the Bavarian police not less. Maybe conservative voters should realize that an overambitious politician who ignores what’s feasible is no help to their cause. These new rules and regulations that don’t apply anywhere outside Bavaria are mostly bad news for an already overstretched police force that needs real support, like enough uniforms and more manpower to deal with growing problems like cybercrime.
The Bavarian police has taken the unusual step of making internal problems public by making a satirical video about the ongoing lack of uniform items. The problem as such, i.e. getting the various pieces of a uniform when needed, is not new. In fact, it seems to have started when the Bavarian police changed the old unbecoming brown and green uniforms to the more fashionable modern blue ones. The Bavarian police was the last of the German police forces to do so and had a transition period when both uniforms were still in use. Things didn’t go smoothly right from the start since the new uniforms often didn’t fit. Some quipped that it had to do with the fact that the uniforms were made in enemy territory, i.e. the north of Germany (Lower Saxony). The real reason, however, seems to have been that the Bavarian police opted for the Austrian model of police uniforms. Unfortunately, the Austrian cut didn’t fit the average Bavarian policeman so well and were often too tight in a delicate region of the male body. The more current complaint is not the tight fit, however, but the shortage of enough uniforms to go round. The police’s humorous way of making a serious problem public is as much to their credit as is their delicate and prudent handling of the huge recent demonstrations in Munich and elsewhere in Bavaria.
It's no secret that the police force in general is stretched to their limits, with overtime work skyrocketing since the pandemic. And the current conservative First Minister, Markus Söder, is doing nothing to ease their burden. Trying to come across as Germany’s toughest law and order politician he has introduced various rules and regulations in Bavaria to counteract the new law legalising Cannabis use in Germany. From the start the law’s supporters had stressed that the biggest advantage of the new law would be its positive impact on the police and the courts, that the legalisation of Cannabis would reduce their workload considerably and allow them to focus on more pressing problems. No such luck in Bavaria, it seems. The new rules and regulations are in part so complicated they will be almost impossible to enforce, and having to enforce them will mean more work for the Bavarian police not less. Maybe conservative voters should realize that an overambitious politician who ignores what’s feasible is no help to their cause. These new rules and regulations that don’t apply anywhere outside Bavaria are mostly bad news for an already overstretched police force that needs real support, like enough uniforms and more manpower to deal with growing problems like cybercrime.
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