Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

German Police Are Too Soft, Really

Cologne sex attacks showed police are too few and too lenient.

January 8, 2016 at 4:45 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Lax in Cologne.
Photographer: Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images

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The outbreak of sexual crime in Cologne on New Year's Eve is turning into the latest big problem for Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal stance on accepting refugees from the Middle East, but it has broader implications than that. A realization is dawning that Germany can no longer be policed in the lax way it has been.

Statistically, Germany is not a particularly safe country for women by European standards. According to the latest data on sexual violence available from Eurostat, only the U.K, Belgium and Sweden report more such crimes.