are you in the music scene, but also in the drug trade or in the red light district active: Arab Clans. Especially in North Rhine-Westphalia, the police fighting against the criminal scene.

Nina Ostersehlte, WDR

“Aggressive mode, is what drives us. The judge in the visor. You are not like us. Have a back like a Gorilla.” In a dimly lit Essen-based recording Studio, the musician Ghazi raps the anger from the body.

He is frustrated with the current coverage of Arab families. He also has Lebanese roots, flirts in his music videos with Clan Connections, violence, and drug-related crime. He’ll serve only the stereotype that the media and the police impose on him: “We are trying to put us in a drawer. Just because a criminal is, all a criminal.”

Rapper Bushido with one of the most famous Clan leaders in Germany, Arafat Abou-Chaker.

Rapper Bushido and his clan connections

The Clan topic is about the Essen-based recording Studio, Berlin and in the media. The success of series such as “4Blocks”, or “Dogs Of Berlin” you will find many viewers. And it is the nationwide well-known Rapper Bushido, who shows up with his clan connections again and again in the press. After the musician has separated from his former business partner, one of the most famous Clan leaders in Germany, Arafat Abou-Chaker, the, this is to have tried to kidnap hit children. Another Clan, the Remmo-Clan, Bushido is supposed to give protection.

But also through spectacular robbery at Berlin’s KaDeWe, or the robbery of a heavy gold coin from the Bode-Museum, Clans are always in the press.

Organized crime

Away from the music scene and tabloids it comes to concrete cases of Organized crime. 2017 were conducted according to the Federal criminal police office nationwide, 39 procedures in the area of Organised crime, which covers Arab and Turkish Clans. In food, it came out in 2018 to 15 investigation procedures in the area of the Clan-crime. It came alone in the Ruhr metropolis to an asset recovery of a total of 800,000 euros.

raids against criminal Clans in the whole of Germany.

large-scale raids in NRW

in North Rhine-Westphalia Minister of the interior, Herbert Reul, has declared a “Zero tolerance strategy” against clan-related crime. For weeks, security and regulatory authorities to proceed with large – scale raids against criminal structures within Arab families. Alone in food, according to the latest police Figures eating in January 2019 320 searches, among other things, in the case of the largest raids against Clan-crime in the history of North Rhine-Westphalia at the beginning of the month. In this case, 14 Suspects were arrested, of untaxed tobacco, a knife and batons ensured.

The criminologist Thomas Feltes, of the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany criticized the action. “Generally speaking, such large-scale raids were more likely to be an effective measure as a reasonable police measure,” says Feltes.

However, these “pinholes are a Wake-up” the scene, says Thomas Rüth, social workers of the AWO Essen who works since decades with the Community. “The people are nervous. We are scarecrows, as structures. I experience, that brings a lot of unrest in the families.” He warns, but also against all the members of Arab families are under suspicion. Not everyone who belong to a Clan, will also criminal.