Most recently, it hit a 33-year-old at the Elbe shopping center. A walker discovered him at the end of last week on a hiking trail at the Ziegeleiteich, fatally shot. Ten days earlier, unknown persons riddled an Audi Q8 with bullets in Tonndorf. The 26-year-old occupant, who was hit multiple times, was still returning fire when police arrived with an empty magazine. Investigators believe the attackers used an automatic weapon.
The 26-year-old was lucky. The SUV’s massive car windows dampened the force of more than a dozen projectiles that slammed into the car. He survived the attack, not the first on him, as it turned out. His buddy Terry S. was less fortunate at the end of July last year. Assassins shot the 27-year-old in the head and chest in the “Nythys” shisha bar on Lübecker Strasse. He died.
What the cases have in common: their protagonists come from the drug milieu, and they were often already known to the police. Gunfire on the open street, obvious contract killings and a city that asks itself: where does this violence come from – and is Hamburg facing a new drug war?
After the murder in the bar and after another act – a 37-year-old was shot in the head at a sports field on the Veddel, he barely survived – the police set up a soko. It is called “Trinity”, which can be translated as “Trinity” or “Trinity” in the broadest sense. Internally, it is said that the investigators expected that at least one other crime would be added to the two crimes known at the time. It was like that in the end.
The investigators at the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) 6 responsible for fighting organized crime (OK) can present initial results: They arrested a 24-year-old who is said to be responsible for the shisha murder. Arrest warrants are still being sought for other suspects.
Spokesman Holger Vehren says: “We do not share the media assessment of a ‘drug war’.” He refers to the success of the Encrochat investigation, during which the police evaluated tens of thousands of chats that French investigators captured on a server used by major dealers. The result was around 260 arrest warrants – a huge blow to the milieu.
“We know from the past that the success of our investigations can also have side effects,” says Vehren. “When perpetrators are in prison or on the run, they can no longer pursue their criminal activities, they lose control. Existing structures are changing and that can lead to such actions.”
Hundreds of dealers are behind bars or have fled to Turkey, for example, which does not extradite to Germany. The Hamburg investigators, who are close to the scene, take a differentiated view of the situation: most of the big dealers convicted would continue to do business from prison and from abroad. There can be no question of a power vacuum that would lead to new distribution struggles. But from a spiral of violence that the city has not experienced for a long time – or even never before.
While the shot in the leg used to be the usual warning, today the shots are targeted, ordered and almost always with the intention of killing, say the experienced officers. Never before have they seized so many weapons during searches as in the past few months: alarm pistols made in Turkey that have been primed, German weapons, parts of which were smuggled out of factories, weapons from former Eastern Bloc stocks, and sometimes an AK-47 with ammunition . Several departments in the LKA are involved in the investigation because the mass of cases exceeds the capacities.
The willingness to use violence within organized crime has increased significantly in recent years, “both the situation reports from Europol and the BKA come to this conclusion,” says criminal law scholar Arndt Sinn. “This is primarily due to the fact that German criminal prosecution in the area of organized crime is neither well positioned nor particularly successful.” violence becomes a means of choice again.
In the field of drug crime in particular, we are dealing with groups whose propensity to violence is already so pronounced, which is due to the special characteristics of the drug market: hierarchies play an even greater role there – and it’s about a lot of money, about markets and about routes.
“Violence has always been a means of defending and maintaining this, and currently probably even more so,” says Sinn. “Especially the internal violence against other groups to protect the markets and to maintain one’s own hierarchy.”
The criminalists’ union BDK shares Sinn’s assessment: “Wanting to fight organized crime means wanting to see it,” says country chief Jan Reinecke. “We’re dealing with a new generation of criminals who don’t shy away from simply shooting their opponents.” It used to be bad for business. “Today, those involved are obviously no longer interested in that.”
According to Reinecke, there were no opportunities to identify criminal structures. The IT possibilities of the police are “a catastrophe”, data protection sets “insurmountable limits”. Due to the lack of staff in the LKA, 10,000 reported crimes are currently unprocessed. The Hamburg police simply lacked the resources to pursue additional organized and drug-related crime.
The police, but also the Federal Ministry of the Interior boasted that there had been a double-digit increase in investigations into organized crime, says Sinn. “However, this increase is solely due to the Encrochat processes. But let’s be honest: Germany didn’t contribute anything to this. The data comes from French investigators.” Germany is not particularly successful in fighting OC.
Given the escalation of violence, some investigators fear worrying times. Because Rotterdam and Antwerp are making their ports ever safer, Hamburg is becoming increasingly important as a gateway for drugs. In addition, series about drug gangs such as “4 Blocks” or “Narcos” have a great appeal to uneducated classes.
“The youngsters are in the starting blocks, want to get involved, have their share of the cake,” says an investigator. “It’s clear that there will also be shit.” But once the gangster’s honor has been offended, it can quickly cost your life today.
