Union calls for increased spending to revamp vehicles and station houses that it says are an insult to officers’ dignity
Germany’s biggest police union has complained about the dilapidated state of hundreds of police stations across the country and a fleet of aged vehicles, saying conditions are a threat to officers’ health and an insult to their dignity.
“Decades-old toilet bowls, mould in the offices, vermin, broken heating units and holes in the ceiling that let the rain in,” said Hagen Husgen of the GdP union, citing just a few of the complaints his organisation had received from members.
“Some of the conditions our people have to endure there are hazardous to their health,” he told the regional daily Münchner Merkur.
Husgen said police cruisers in Europe’s top economy, which prides itself on its automotive prowess, were often so old and beat-up that they were “shameful” and “embarrassing” to officers on their patrols.
