Berlin rolls out record police presence for New Year’s Eve

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Berlin is gearing up for its biggest police operation in decades on Sunday as fears grow of a repeat of widescale rioting last New Year’s Eve that prompted conservatives to brand the capital a “city of chaos”.

The streets of the German capital will see twice as many officers deployed as on the night of December 31 last year which saw running battles between police and youths who attacked them with firecrackers and rockets.

That violence was a key factor in the shock victory of conservatives in citywide elections in February that brought an end to 22 years of rule by the left-of-centre Social Democrats (SPD), the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The city government led by the Christian Democrats (CDU) will be under intense pressure to demonstrate it has turned the page and can do a better job of upholding law and order than the SPD-led administration it replaced.

To that end, it has drafted in 3,500 policemen from Berlin itself and from the nearby federal states of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt to maintain order in the capital. 

“It is the biggest New Year’s Eve deployment we’ve seen in decades,” said Barbara Slowik, Berlin’s police chief.

Yet many officials fear the potential for violence has grown significantly in the past few months following Hamas’s rampage through Israel on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza.

Berlin has seen a wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations since then, often in areas that were the scenes of violence on last New Year’s Eve.

“We’re aware of the fact that the security situation in our city is more tense since October 7 than it was previously,” said Kai Wegner, Berlin’s mayor.

New Year’s Eve in Germany is frequently an excuse for young people to set off rounds of fireworks in densely populated residential areas that within hours can look and sound like war zones,…