Knives For Netflix? The Unusual Proposal By German Police Union Chief To Reduce Crime

Authored by Thomas Brooke via ReMix News,

A German police union chief has urged the government to consider a proposal for criminals who hand in knives to receive substantial rewards, including a year’s subscription to the Netflix streaming service.

Jochen Kopelke, the chairman of the police union (GdP), expressed his concern about the rising knife crime epidemic enveloping German cities and called on the federal left-wing administration to think outside the box to tackle the issue effectively.

He proposed an amnesty for all those in possession of a knife willing to hand in their weapons but suggested that a material reward was necessary to incentivize youths in particular to do so.

“For this measure to be effective, the federal government must create serious incentives for those who donate,” said Jochen Kopelke.

“Specifically, that could mean a year of Netflix for the delivery of a banned butterfly knife,” he added.

German law prohibits possession of a knife with a blade length of 12 cm or greater. However, butterfly knives have become the go-to weapon for many, and knife crime has spiraled in recent years.

On Tuesday, surgeons at Berlin’s university hospital, Charité, revealed they treated more victims of knife crime in the first half of this year than they did in the whole of 2023.

The injuries are also more serious with multiple and deeper stab wounds, often inflicted by larger knives, according to Ulrich Stöckle, managing director of the Center for Musculoskeletal Surgery.

“Why is there this increasing trend of violence?” he asked.

One indisputable fact from recently published interior ministry data is that foreign nationals are disproportionately represented in crime stats. Put simply, the sky-high immigration experienced by Germany in recent years has led to higher levels of crime.

Foreign nationals represented 41 percent of all crime suspects in 2023, despite comprising 15 percent of the population.

Specifically analyzing the levels of violent crime for which knife-related attacks fall, a total of 214,000 violent crimes were registered across Germany last year, up 8.6 percent on the previous year.

Last year was also a record for cases involving dangerous and grievous bodily harm reaching 154,000, up 6.8 percent.

It is important to note that anyone who has been naturalized as a German citizen, even if they were born abroad, does not count towards the crime committed by foreigners.

The federal government recently introduced reforms to the country’s citizenship laws to expedite the naturalization process.

Read more here…