Mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Years Eve

[Cellardoor1]

I've just read this and I'm shocked that such a thing could happen. A group of around 1,000 men gathered and assaulted at least 60 women and girls and also pickpocketed people. Apparently the news wasn't released until now out of fears it could stir up tension as the men appeared to be of Arab/North African appearance, possibly refugees.

abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/cologne-police-chief-condemns-sex-assaults-years-eve-36083833

Bit - if the police have absolutely no idea who these people were, then they're in real trouble. What happened to day to day policing being about getting to know your community? What happened to CCTV?

Given all the various terrible things that have been happening in public places in Europe and beyond over the last few years, shouldn't they be getting their shit together generally? What if (God forbid) one of these men had been a suicide bomber?

I get that you can't protect everyone all the time, but in this day and age what kind of police force sees a big group of 'arab' men congregate and leaves them to it?

Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely not saying all 'arab' men should be controlled in that way. But if certain large groups of people (Arabs/football hooligans/women who are famous for being a bit fighty - random examples) are known for potentially being an increased risk to the public, shouldn't the police be a bit more proactive?

Its down to the police/authorities to find out how/why this happened but they don't appear to care very much. After all, it was only women who suffered and they wouldn't want to seem to be criminalising a certain group of people who may or may not be of a different ethnicity.

I also think there is a lot of 'othering' going on here.

Its very convenient for 'white' men who largely run society to have the blame laid at the feet of 'black/brown' men for this and then move on to talking about immigration.

I think what I'm actually trying to say, is that if you have a potentially lawless group of people, completely divorced from the rest of society, you're buggered. No matter who they are and what they may be up to.

A lot of blethering goes on.

Abeta - you can lay the blame at the lizard overlords if you like, what matters here is making sure it doesn't happen again.

ABetaDad had the intention been to rob, then they would have just robbed. To say the sexual assault was a distraction technique to facilitate the robbery seems to be purposefully underplaying the sexual assault. I don't understand why you would do that.

Sorry, ABetaDad but when faced with a mass sexual assault of women by a large, aggressive mob of Arabic/North African heritage men my first reaction is to be outraged about the assaults, not about the 'othering' of the poor victimised men doing the groping

Flinging according to some PPs on this thead who live in Germany, there is much less CCTV than here -it is not liked, seen as too "Big Brother"

I have no idea why the police allowed this group to congregate. I simply can't imagine that the British Transport Police would allow this to happen say at Manchester Piccadilly, let alone the regular police on the street. Sometimes I think the British police are too eavy handed with crowds but this could and should have been averted

Lidia, that is discussed at length in the recent cmo report. Doctors areNOT allowed to perform fgm, which is what that would be. They can remove what has been doe to allow the woman to give birth and they can perform reconstructive surgery. They CANNOT "sew back up"
Bloody barbaric practice. Needs completely and utterly stamping out and I think we are heading in the right direction. I hope this will not be set back.

If it was planned pick-pocketing, men would have been targeted too. Women are the only reported victims.

I'm very curious about how the police would have responded had this been a terrorist* attack, along the lines of the recent Paris attacks. Germany isn't sending out signals that it will be a hard target.

*using terrorist here in the way it is commonly used, though I disagree with it.

PaulDirac - I said that robbery may have been the initial objective. The initiating factor and then it rapidly and uncontrollably morphed into a generalised lawless attack on women resulting in a large number of sexual assaults.

I am not minimising what happened. I am trying to understand why/how a group of men apparently without recent precedent and without the knowledge of the police all came to be in one place and apparently then spontaneously carried out large numbers of sexual assaults.

Its a lot more complex than 'asylum seekers from North African/ME are intent on sexually assaulting our women' which is what the news reports have degenerated to.

If we don't understand how/why it happened we have no chance of stopping it happening again. My personal view is it could just have easily happened in any other major European city. Its not particular to Germany.

Which news reports are these, could you please share a link?

If you think they initially planned to rob but it ended up turning into sexual assault, fine. That is quite different from saying the sexual assault was a distraction technique to aid robbery.

Sorry lidia, sounds like I was telling you off for not reading the cmo report before posting :) not my intention, just worth a mention as I thought it was a good read

"apparently without recent precedent"
This is not true though. The area around the central station and Dom are notorious for pickpocketing, drug dealing, prostitution etc.

If it was planned pick-pocketing, men would have been targeted too. Women are the only reported victims.
^ yy to this.

I have only scanned last nights posts, but can I just point out that the Mayor of Cologne is a woman?

According the DM I see us women of Cologne are all on "lock down". Which is a shame because I really need to nip to Aldi today.... I am seeing a lot of scare mongering in the Brit press.

Facts according to Cologne police:

NYE 3pm to 9pm approx. 400 men gather at the Domplatz

to 11pm - the crowd grows to over 1000, with uncontrolled fireworks, drinking etc.

11:30pm police were called to the area and the crowd was dispersed

from 12:45am the forst assault reports started to come through. The Domplatz started to fill up again but was again dispersed by police. Women at this point were led through to the station by police.

Around 4am all was quiet.

On Saturday 2nd Jan police set up an action group to coordinate the assault reports and investigate.

Advice remains as it usually does for these things - stay in a group, report any antisocial behaviour etc.

I'm now reading over 100 crimes reported, three quarters with a "sexual component".

Apparently as the large group was broken up, smaller groups formed and this seems to be when most of the assaults happened.

The police are under massive pressure from the German press. The police chief may well end up resigning from the looks of it.

Paul - all the news reports are talking about N. African /ME men and the general discussion across the internet is about 'asylum seekers' and linking it to Merkel and allowing in asylum seekers.

You can see the way the debate is going. Its not about the women who were assaulted and why/how this happened.

The plain fact is that a large group of men gathered together and they assaulted large number of women.

Do we really believe that id hundreds of N. African ME men all communicated with each other and agree to meet in one place with a pre-determined plan to sexually assault women? Like a flash mob?

We know the assaults happened - we have absolutely no idea who/why and nobody seems terribly interested in that question but hey ho here are some convenient outsiders no one really likes so we blame them and agree we should stop immigration. Is that what the solution is and we all move on?

Sorry also to add, the police haven't admitted any sort of wrong doing as yet. I'm reading lots of "we had police there, we weren't overrun" type of stuff.

I am trying to understand why/how a group of men apparently without recent precedent and without the knowledge of the police all came to be in one place and apparently then spontaneously carried out large numbers of sexual assaults. Many people on this thread have recounted their own experiences of travelling in the countries being discussed where large groups of men congregate together, apparently spontaneously, and do things where western women are concerned. This is my experience too although my friends and I were just stared at and followed. Sexual assault is always a normalised symbolic way of exercising power and dominance (after all, who'd really want to have mutually consenting sex in this way?). Sexual assault is about bolstering up your own power at the expense of the victim. In this instance, the gendered nature of the exercise in power was not as important as sending a message of hate to that society. If they have access to a mobile phone, they will have an awareness that this behaviour is unacceptable there.

Re FGM Bloody barbaric practice. Needs completely and utterly stamping out and I think we are heading in the right direction. I hope this will not be set back. - but we do now have at least 85 fully operational Sharia courts in the UK - and the article that I wanted to reference here has been removed from its webpage. www.theguardian.com/info/2015/dec/09/removed-news-agency-feed-article

Do you feel the Mayor's response has been good onthephone?
(Thank you for your posts by the way.)

onthephone100 - your timeline is interesting and seems not to match the original reports. Like I said, this is more complex than '1000' N.Africa/ME men stood outside a railway station sexuaally assaulting women'.