A police operation before the Hamburg city derby in the 2nd Bundesliga caused a stir on Friday evening. The police had taken several supporters of FC St. Pauli into custody. A video circulating on Twitter shows one such detention, in which a police officer uses coercion in the form of physical violence. "It is necessary to check whether proportionality has been observed," the police said on Twitter.
The video shows several people being pinned to the ground by police officers. One officer punched a man lying on the ground while another pinned his legs. "These videos never look pretty," said police spokeswoman Sandra Levgrün. "But no colleague does that for fun!" The officer in the video is a federal police officer.
FC St. Pauli called for clarification. "There was a massive police operation on the Heiligengeistfeld, several people were injured," said the association. In view of the available videos and eyewitness reports, the urgent question of proportionality arises.
According to the police, around 150 masked St. Pauli supporters had previously run towards a fan march by Hamburger SV supporters. "It was a targeted action," said Levgrün. "We intervened and prevented the HSV fans from being massively attacked." The police took a subgroup into custody. There are indications that FC St. Pauli fans also tried to attack officials.
Around 3,500 HSV supporters marched loudly through St. Pauli in the afternoon. About 400 "problem fans" were among the participants, said a police spokesman. Nevertheless, it remained peaceful. On the route from the Altona Balcony over the Reeperbahn to the Millerntor Stadium, which was accompanied by more than a hundred officers, a cavalry squadron and a police helicopter, pyrotechnics were occasionally burned off.
Since it was a risk game, the security precautions in the Hanseatic city had been strengthened. The primary goal was to separate the hostile fan scenes, which met again in a sold-out stadium for the first time since the beginning of the corona pandemic. FC St. Pauli won the game 3-0 in front of almost 30,000 spectators.
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