A Staff Editorial Report,
by Otto Diederichs

The changes announced in the last issue of CILIP now take place effective this issue. To begin with, we all bid farewell to Falco Werkentin. He will remain a member of the editorial board, but has withdrawn from editorial staff activities. This staff personnel change is acompanied by other changes in the layout and format of the journal as well as in subject matter.
In our focus topic section we have gathered all of the available information on the reorganization and organization of the police in the new states of the former GDR. In some instances, the extent of „Westernization“ is simply astonishing. Whether as citizens, future police officials or government mini-sters, the „Easterners“ as they are often referred to, often play little more than „extra“ roles in this new production.

Unified German Security,
by Wolf-Dieter Narr

That which in 1972 ultimately became known as the „Domestic Security System“ is now being systematically expanded by German unification. Yet it is precisely within this system that changes could have been undertaken which would have rendered it more in conformance with its constitutional mandate. Precisely, as if numerous of its „services“, whose sole justification had initially been the conflict between East and West, had not become totally superfluous in as much as the GDR became an integral part of the FRG and the East was also undergoing fundamental changes, were „extended“ into the new territories with minor changes in task structure. Prima facie evidence of the extent to which the „Domestic Security System“ developed in the unrestive era of the early 70’s has now become part of the constitutional reality of the FRG over the course of time, as part of an almost total all-party consensus. An opportunity to liberalize and democratize the police force and domestic intelligence services, the state monopoly on domestic violence, passed over without being taken.
A la Sample Proposal Act,
by Heiner Busch

The process of adapting police legislation to the realities of the FRG set in by no means only since the former GDR was formally incorporated into the FRG. Under the former de Maiziére regime, the Volkskammer of the GDR passed the Police Task Structure Act (Polizeiaufgabengesetz/PAG) that is closely patterned after the „Sample Proposal for a Unified Police Act for the Federal and State Government“, including the pre-emptive authorities as well as the additional definition of the task of „preventive crime-fighting“ contained in it. Until corresponding legislation at the state level in the new states goes into effect, the PAG is still on the books.

The Current State of Police Reorganisation in the New States,
by Otto Diederichs

To the extent it hasn’t already happened, the parliaments of all the new states are in the process of passing their own Police Organisation Acts as quickly as possible, thus creating the legal basis for completing the reorganization of their police forces. Basically, they tend to more or less closely conform to the models presented by their respective „godfather“ states in the FRG. And another common feature has also become apparent: They are as unwilling to do without their own Ready Police Reserves or Special Forces as they are to relinquish their own State Detective Bureaus. The article provides a survey of the current state of developments.

Questionnaires and Personnel Commissions,
by Otto Diederichs

When a political system becomes as totally permeated by intelligence services as was the case in the former GDR, it is only natural that thousands and thousands of persons were needed just to keep it alive from one day to the next and sufficiently nourished with new information. What generally holds true for bureaucracies, pertains all the more for the members of the so-called security organs. The higher up the chain of command a person was located, the greater the probability that he or she was involved in dirty sicks. In addi-tion to active perpetrators, there will also be countless persons attached (some of them even dependent on them) to the organs without having committed culpable acts in the strictest sense of the term. In order to investigate such a possibility, all those involved were presented with self-developed que-stionnaires to be evaluated by personnel commissions also to be established. The first public servants to be required to answer these questionnaires were all members of the People’s Police. However, we have serious doubts about the procedure. The article reflects the current state of developments.

Union Problems/Chances for Reformation of the Police in the States of the Former GDR,
by Hermann Lutz

The author, national president of the Union of the Police (Gewerkschaft der Polizei – GdP) illustrates some of the problems arising out of the current si-tuation, using such examples as the case of the minister who for years had been a member of the national steering committee of the Free German Youth and suddenly finds himself confronted with the necessity of negotiating with a labour council. Or such embarassing situations as the  one among the first members of the former People’s Police to graduate from Police Leadership Academy in their crash courses in democracy only to find that they have long been relieved of their duties.

A „Green“ Chief of Police in the State of Brandenburg?
By Otto Diederichs

In accordance with an agreement between the factions, the six new seats for chiefs of police in the new state of Brandenburg are to be filled with persons appointed by the parties. This agreement has already given cause for headaches in the capital city of Potsdam, in as much as the coalition partner „COALITION 90“ has selected the former Greens member of federal parliament, Manfred Such, who had previously held the rank of a senior detective commissar in the city of Werl in the state of North Rhine/Westphalia.
While it is true that the tri-partite „traffic light coalition“ in Brandenburg, comprised of the SPD = red, FDP = yellow and the „COALITION 90“ = green, is already the fourth new state to break with traditional coalition etiquette, the public security apparatus appears to have major problems in ac-cepting greens philosophy in its own house. The co-founder of the „Federal Working Group of Critical Cops“, Manfred Such, may now find himself being sacrificed in deferrence to these fears.

The Joint State Detective Agency of the Five New States,
by Bernhard Gill

The German-German  unification process has created – or to put it more accu-rately, inherited – some organisational curiosities, as can be demonstrated in the case of the still extant remnants of the Central Detective Agency of the GDR (Zentrales Kriminalamt), now known as the Joint State Detective Agency (Gemeinsames Landeskriminalamt). Staffed with numerous politically tarnished detective and state security officers and shielded of by the political protection of both the Modrow and de Maizière administrations, one of the relics of the old regime lives on… Since neither the Federal Detective Agency in Wiesbaden, nor any of the new states‘ ministeries of the interior are interested in maintaining the Joint State Detective Agency, the author predicts its closure by the end of 1991.

The Federal Border Guard on the Upswing,
by Falco Werkentin

The Federal Border Guard celebrates its fortieth birthday this year. In 1951, when the organisation was founded, there were two primary motives for the policy decision: On the one hand, it was a clear step toward re-armament, poorly disguised under the cloak of the police uniform, and, on the other hand, it was meant to be an anti-civil war force in the hands of the federal government, in other words „border guards“ as an emergency force to be de-ployed in the event of civil disorder, as the Police Union (GdP) noted at the time. By the beginning of the 70’s, the range of task to be performed by the border guards had been significantly expanded by the SPD-FDP social-liberal coalition in Bonn. Independent of the demise of its original raison d`etre – the East/West conflict – and the significant reduction in border control func-tions resulting from the creation of the new single European market by the end of 1992, the FBG is in the midst of a restructuring process which will ultimately further expand its total personnel strength as well as the scope of its tasks.

The Special Tasks Unit in Brandenburg,
by Wolfgang Gast

For the general public they existed as little as the crime they were to be fighting in the former GDR: the Anti-Terror Unit of the German People’s Police in Potsdam. Although it was actually founded in 1974, this unit continued to operate predominantly behind the scenes up until the „Change“ in late 1989. The „operative crimes of violence“ which it fought were not for public con-sumption in Honecker’s state. This special unit survived the „Change“ and became a Special Tasks Unit  of the Brandenburg State Police. Previously primarily occupied with rounding up deserters from the Soviet Army, the newly christened unit will have the job of dealing with armed bank robbery, kidnapping and violence at sports events such as soccer matches.
Data Chaos in the „Wild East“,
by Lena Schraut

40 years if independent development have left their traces in both parts of Germany so indelibly that collating the two on a day-to-day basis presents se-rious difficulties. As is the case in many other areas, data processing „Made in GDR“ simply doesn’t adapt itself that well to the information and commu-nications technology of the FRG, whereby the technical incompatibilities (with all the attendant difficulties) are the least of the problems to be overcome. How does one effectively cleanse hundreds of thousands of files according to the standards of data protection in the Federal Republic if by far many of the data banks created in the former GDR still have to be located and evaluated, especially if control agencies such as data protection commissioners etc. don’t exist because they haven’t been appointed or because it doesn’t fall within their realm of responsibility? How does one deal with criminal acts which are not synonymous due to the dissimilarities of the two legal systems? The police themselves express their fears about using such data all too quickly because precisely this could lead to a shift in the foundations of police data processing.

The Police Registration System of the GDR,
by Kirsten Paritong-Waldheim et al.

The national population registration system of the GDR was organised cen-tralistically. Extensive data banks were maintained both locally and at the national center. Numerous state and other agencies were provided updates on an ongoing basis. The article provides an overview of the structure and tasks of the population registration system in the former GDR, explaining the si-gnificance of individual data banks, files and the individual identification number.

The State Protection Divisions,
by Thilo Weichert

Roughly one year ago – and prior to the incorporation of the former DGD into the FRG, federal chancellor Helmut Kohl demanded the dissolution of the GDR State Security Service.  In his 10-Point-Program for the GDR he even went so far as to demand the dissolution of the the criminal code for politically motivated acts. Yet, there is little reason for us to restrict our view to the countries of the former East bloc. However, there is little reason to assume that political eavesdropping, surveillance and persecution of political adversaries are by any means a monopoly of Stalinist states, as is well de-monstrated not only in the history of the Federal Republic, but in the multi-tude of news reports from such countries heretofore praised as liberal, inclu-ding Switzerland and Austria. It is high time to do away with this old waste and other remnants of authoritarian thinking and cold war politics as continue to exist in the Federal Republic is the conclusion of the author in his fact-filled review of the history and function of the State Protection Divisions in the state’s attorneys offices and police departments.

Fatal Police Shootings 1990,
by Otto Diederichs

During the past year at least 10 persons died as a result of police use of firearms. Three more persons lost their lives due to the same causes on the territory of the former GDR which will be separately listed this year for the first but also last time.
One other peculiarity: For the first time a police officer was fatally wounded by another police officer who thought he was a fleeing criminal. How did it happen? The victim was a police undercover agent who was supposed to make an attempted escape in conjunction with a staged arrest on the drug scene.

Intelligence Service Legislation,
by Heiner Busch

After four years of dispute within and outside of parliament, the Bonn coali-tion parties, the CDU/CSU and the FDP, finally presented a bad compromise solution on the 12th of September, 1990 in the mediation committee of the Bundestag which also evoked the approval from the SPD faction of federal parliament. Federal parliament approved the compromise solution on September 19th, and the Council of State’s Representatives gave its approval on September 21st. It took another three months before the Intelligence Service and Data Protection Act was codified and published in the German Federal Register, thus becoming law on December 29th, 1990. The article includes a brief survey of the legislative history of these acts and a critical commentary on key paragraphs of the new legislation.