The Faculty of Applied Social Studies dedicated the latest "8 against 88" day of action to the topic "Police as the enemy? Social work and the police in democracy". Eleven speakers from three continents not only shed light on the situation in Dortmund, but also described conditions in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the USA - including from the perspective of hip-hop.
Prof. Dr. Eva Groß from the Police Academy in Hamburg spoke about democracy-related attitudes in the police force. As with an iceberg, she compared, the right-wing extremist activities visible on the surface are based on underlying misanthropic attitudes, which can also be found in the middle of society. It was therefore only logical that the police's various efforts to counteract this should begin at the training stage.
The claim of the police to be the image of society should not be fulfilled. Rather, in view of its special role in the constitutional state as an organ for enforcing the state's monopoly on the use of force, it must serve as a role model for others. And not only through the sensitive approach of police officers to particular problem situations, but in their actions as a whole.
The situation in Dortmund
Deniz Greschner from the Multicultural Forum, Mirza Demirovic from the Nordstadtliga and police spokesperson Peter Bandermann discussed how the Dortmund police deal with people with a migration background. Using the example of 16-year-old Mouhamed Lamine Dramé, who had fled alone from Senegal and was killed by a police officer during an operation in Dortmund in 2022, the participants discussed the circumstances that may have contributed to this accident: an under-criticized, often unconscious xenophobia in society and in the police on the one hand and a great mistrust of young people, especially those with a migrant background, towards the police on the other.
The participants also identified ways to avoid such accidents in the future: Self-reflection on the part of the police and their honest cooperation with multicultural initiatives and a continued tireless commitment to understanding on the part of all those involved.
USA: Police and hip-hop
Dr. Travis Harris, Assistant Professor at Norfolk State University (USA), traced the arc from police violence to hip-hop. From the "law-and-order" policy in the USA in the 1960s to the politically proclaimed "war on drugs" and the "cold war", Dr. Harris traced the planned militarization of the US police and thus the increasing disparity in state power to the detriment of the black population. While the state negates the identity of black people, they find it in hip-hop.
Hip-hop is not African-American music of the past decades, but a phenomenon independent of time and place as a result of the involuntary expulsion from Africa: "They found a way of being, they found life in hip-hop".
The global perspective
In the concluding discussion with guests from the USA, South Africa and Zimbabwe, it became clear that police violence should not only be understood as violence by whites against blacks. Sociology professors Gesemia Nelson and Karim Adibifar, both from Metropolitan State University Denver, gave an impressive account of the feeling of insecurity among black people in the USA, where there are six times more black people than white people among police victims, and where even professionally successful black parents tell their children to say nothing more than their names whenever they come into contact with the police and otherwise insist on calling their parents.
Sunungurayi Charamba and Tapiwanashe Gladys Simango from Zimbabwe and Nomusa Munoangira and Bongane Morris Mzinyane from South Africa, four doctoral students from Africa who are currently visiting the Faculty of Applied Social Studies at Fachhochschule Dortmund, took part in the discussion. They pleaded for a differentiated approach: "'The police' are not primarily individual people, but a system." In the countries of the Global South in particular, the participants agreed that the topic should be viewed critically as a colonial reappraisal and state structures should be reformulated.
The discussions were moderated by Prof. Dr. Dierk Borstel from the Faculty of Applied Social Studies and Dr. Sina Nitzsche from the Institute for Higher Education Didactics at Fachhochschule Dortmund. Prof. Dr. Katja Nowacki, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Social Studies, opened the event.
The "8 against 88" day of action
The "8 against 88" format is dedicated to annual events on topics such as right-wing extremism, racism, populism and threats to democracy. The "8" stands for the Faculty of Applied Social Studies and the "88" for a code of the far-right scene that symbolizes the Hitler salute.