A group of some 220 Berlin police officers were sent home from Hamburg, accused of amongst other things public sex acts, property damage and mishandling service weapons.
“They were bored,” said a spokesman.
Authorities in Hamburg said on Tuesday that the city had asked a group of some 220 Berlin police officers stationed in the city ahead of upcoming G20 summit to return home immediately.
A representative for Berlin’s police force later confirmed witness accounts that the officers had engaged in a weekend of revelry, including public sex acts, excessive drunkenness and misuse of firearms.
“This behavior is embarrassing for the Berlin police,” spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told the Berliner Morgenpost.
‘There was no television’
In a separate interview with Die Zeit newspaper, Neuendorf gave a half-hearted excuse: “They were bored. There was no television.”
However, he said exasperatedly, “you can’t just have sex out in the open!”
Hamburg, known perhaps equally for its port and picturesque riverside cityscape as well as for its brothels and nightclubs, is hosting the G20 summit of world leaders from July 7-8.
Because of this, police from all over Germany have come to assist local officers with the increased security demands that such a summit entails.
The police officers in question were set up in a former refugee housing center in the nearby town of Bad Segeberg. Locals quickly began to complain of property damage and unseemly behavior, including one officer in a bathrobe who reportedly began brandishing his service pistol, and a line of policemen urinating together in public.
It is unclear how many of the offenders were officers and how many were locals, but Hamburg has asked all 220 police be sent home to Berlin.
This is the latest in a string of scandals for the city police according to the Berliner Morgenpost. A few months ago, two brothers were discovered to be running a drug ring inside the police academy. This came just after news broke that a trainee officer had stolen surveillance equipment and tried to resell it.
