agingrebel.com
Yesterday the German Bundestag passed
legislation that will allow Germany’s federal government to prosecute
and pursue forfeiture actions against motorcycle clubs – Germany calls
them rockergrupen. The new legislation probably signals a refinement in the German war on bikers.
The Federal Republic of Germany is
comprised of 16 states. Since 1871, when Germany became a
politically unified nation rather than a culturally unified but
politically divided nation, police power has traditionally been reserved
to the various German states. The one exception was the Nazi era, when
police power was centralized. After Germany was reunified in 1990, most
police power continued to reside with the states. The duties of federal
police in Germany have been largely limited to securing the country’s
borders. And, since the advent of the European Union, which effectively
eliminated national borders in Europe, the federal police have been
mostly delegated to policing airports and trains.
In the United States investigations and
prosecutions of motorcycle clubs are always directed by the Department
of Justice and by federal police forces like the ATF, the FBI, the DEA
and the Department of Homeland Security.
National Menace
But in Germany, for example, the German
state of Berlin banned wearing the Hells Angels patch in May 2014; the
German state of North Rhine-Westphalia banned insignia associated with
both the Hells Angels and the Bandidos a couple of months later; and an
incident in which two Mongols were allegedly shot by Hells Angels in
Hamburg last December was investigated by police there.
A German appeals court recently
overturned the German patch bans. The new national legislation was
introduced after prosecutors in Hamburg dropped their appeal of that
decision.
Germany has seen motorcycle clubs as a
national menace for more than three decades but has been unable to
eliminate them. As Wolfgang Dick, a reporter for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle,
put it four years ago: “The main problem is that many members of
motorcycle gangs – mostly men aged 40 to 50 with a good education – have
regular jobs. They live in inconspicuous small houses with neat
gardens. They are well connected and have a strict, self-imposed code of
honor.”
“Because of that, we don’t receive any
testimony,” anti-biker zealot Frank Schleiden told the television
reporter. “Aggrieved gang members never betray the perpetrators. The
gangs shut themselves off completely and sort things out between
themselves.”
But Federal German Police, instigated by
American federal police, have been chomping at the bit to get in on the
action. After the 2014 Berlin ban, André Schulz, who is the director of
Germany’s Association of Criminal Police, told Speigel “that a
nationwide phenomenon like biker gangs…needs to be…centrally
investigated.” Today Germany is a step closer to doing that.