Police Report of Cologne New Year’s Eve Details Chaos, Overwhelmed Force

Angela Merkel signals willingness to toughen deportation procedures

The Wall Street Journal

By RUTH BENDER

Updated Jan. 7, 2016 4:18 p.m. ET

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A detailed account of the mass assaults in Germany’s fourth-largest city on New Year’s Eve emerged Thursday, drawing a picture of chaos and aggression that left police overstretched and attackers enjoying virtual free rein.

An internal federal police report dated Jan. 4 and seen by The Wall Street Journal described scenes in Cologne of crying women fleeing sexual molestation from crowds of men, passersby trying to rescue young girls from being raped, and groups of intoxicated men throwing bottles and fireworks at a police force no longer in control of the situation.

“Women alone or with others were literally running the gantlet through crowds of heavily drunk men, in a way that defies description,” a senior police official in charge that night wrote in the report.

“Our units on the ground couldn’t master all the events, assaults and crimes, there were simply too many at the same time,” the official wrote.

Critics of the government’s open-door refugee policy pointed to the New Year’s Eve events in Cologne as evidence that Berlin’s massive dispatch of federal police to oversee the transit of refugees at the country’s borders had left its cities dangerously vulnerable amid rising concern about organized crime and terrorism.

A spokesman for the federal police confirmed the veracity of the report but declined to comment further on the events of the night. The report was written by a senior official and is one of several accounts aimed at establishing a full reckoning of what happened that night, he said.

The assaults in Cologne, along with reports of similar events in Stuttgart and Hamburg, have fueled a debate over the security implications of record migration into the country as numerous witnesses and police said the alleged attackers appeared to be from the “Arab or North African area.”

In the police report, the official wrote that women reported being sexually assaulted by “groups of men with migration background.” On Thursday, it was still unclear if any of the attackers were recently arrived migrants. Police said they had identified 16 young men mainly of “North African” origin who could be among the perpetrators. As of Thursday evening, two of the 16 were being detained, a Cologne police spokeswoman said.

Over one million migrants, mostly from the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan, entered Germany last year, raising public concerns about how the country would manage to integrate them and official warnings that criminals or extremists could be among the migrants.

Germany remained in shock over the scores of assaults, which became public days after they took place during the New Year celebrations on a popular gathering spot outside Cologne’s main train station and near its famous cathedral.

Police said they had no reason to expect such an escalation on New Year’s Eve but lamented that they lacked forces to cope with the situation, rejecting sharp criticism from Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière on Wednesday.

“There were by far too few policemen,” said Ernst Walter, head of the trade union for federal police. Mr. Walter said federal police couldn’t call in reinforcements that night because the emergency reserve units usually on call had been deployed to assist with border controls in Bavaria, the main entry point for migrants coming to Germany.

“We are stretched to our limit and we have terror alerts, migration and mass crimes. That’s a huge problem,” Mr. Walter said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to deflect criticism by calling for a full investigation of the night’s events.

“Women’s feeling of complete defenselessness is intolerable, also to me personally. Therefore, it’s important that everything that happened gets put on the table,” Ms. Merkel said Thursday. She said the government would examine whether enough has been done to facilitate the deportation of asylum seekers who are convicted of crimes; German law currently sets high hurdles for such deportations.

According to the federal police report about the Cologne incidents, police feared serious injuries or even deaths after recording initial reports of attacks against women and as fireworks were being shot into a growing crowd.

With limited resources, however, police focused on clearing the area in front of the train station and, in many cases, couldn’t carry out identity checks, register complaints or detain people, the report said.

Groups of aggressive men failed to obey police orders and hindered officers from trying to rescue women under assault by fencing them off behind large groups, the police official added in the report.

“Our forces encountered a lack of respect that I have not seen in 29 years of services,” the author wrote.

While it remained unclear if the attackers were recently arrived migrants, prospects of a backlash against refugees and foreigners rose as right-wing groups blamed the incidents on Ms. Merkel’s policies.

The anti-Islamic group Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, known by its German initials as Pegida, called for a protest on Saturday outside the Cologne cathedral under the slogan “Pegida protects.” A counterprotest against far-right movements was also planned, police said.

“A government that can’t protect its own people from crimes committed by foreigners has failed and must step down,” Michael Diendorf, one of the local Pegida organizers, wrote on Twitter.

Police in Cologne meanwhile bulked up their investigation team with up to 80 officers trying to track down the attackers.

Police said they had identified 16 young men mainly of “North African” origin they believe could be among the perpetrators. As of Thursday evening, two of the 16 were being detained, a Cologne police spokeswoman said.

A total of 121 complaints had been filed in Cologne by Thursday, around three quarters of them for sexual assault, police said.

Arnold Plickert, deputy head of the largest German police union, said police checked the identities of about 70 individuals in and around the square during the night. Among those were some who identified themselves as asylum seekers and police are investigating if they committed any of the reported sexual assaults, he said.

—Andrea Thomas in Berlin contributed to this article.

Write to Ruth Bender at Ruth.Bender@wsj.com