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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

Oh come on, they are quite rare in the US as well, and the US is a LOT larger than Germany.

> Oh come on, they are quite rare in the US as well, and the US is a LOT larger than Germany.

Yes, if "a LOT larger" means 3.5x larger. Germany has 82 million inhabitants and is the most populous country in Europe.

A lot larger as in landmass. People pay attention to what goes on in their geographic area, regardless of its population.

For example, a beating in California isn't going to be as troubling to a resident in Vermont. They'll simply say "different state, different police force". On the other hand, a beating in Berlin is going to trouble someone in any part of Germany.

Believe it or not, Germany is also a federal republic with distinct regional differences. Germany doesn't even have federal policing.

Not true: the former border police (Bundesgrenzschutz, parent organization to the famous GSG 9) has been officially the Bundespolizeit (federal police) since 2005, and there has always (well, since the 1951) been a federal investigation agency (Bundeskriminalamt). Most claims of police violence are actually against the Bereitschaftspolizei (riot police units, exist both at state and federal level), which is not surprising since they are deployed (and trained) mainly for potentially violent situations.

To clarify: I know there are federal investigative police (but not as powerful as the FBI, right?) so I deliberately used the verb, meaning enforcement. I didn't know there were federal riot police though.

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