On 6 October Kupa Ilunga Medard Mutombo died in the Charité university hospital. He was the victim of massive police violence.
The incident occurred on September 14, when three police officers had to transfer the schizophrenic resident of the Spandau sheltered housing “Hostel for the homeless and mentally disabled” to a psychiatric hospital, in accordance with a court order. They were accompanied by a doctor and an ambulance.
The 64-year-old Congolese was a “childish and happy person” who was “very kind”, rather “childish” and loved to laugh, according to his brother Mutombo Mansamba at a press conference by the counseling center for victims of racism, ReachOut, two weeks ago. . Neither he nor his caregivers have ever “detected any kind of aggression in him”.
When uniformed officers suddenly appeared outside his room door at around 11:00 am on September 14, Mutombo panicked and tried to lock the door. He did not know that he would only be taken to a psychiatric hospital. His supervisors hadn’t informed him of this.
What happened next can only be classified as an outbreak of violence. The three police officers made their way into his room, overwhelmed and pinned the panicked man to the ground. According to the newspaper taz Mutombo’s legal guardian was able to watch from the corridor as a “burly officer” pressed his knee to the frail patient’s neck and the sick man spat blood. The blood was wiped from his face with a blanket.
The officers called for reinforcements, after which thirteen other (!) Uniformed officers approached and crowded into the room, which was only 10 by 6 feet.
Now the officials obviously wanted to prevent them from witnessing their actions. With the inscription: “We don’t want tourists here!”, The door of the room was closed from the inside and Mutombo was hidden from the sight of his legal guardian.
The caretaker and a dorm employee finally heard the warning call from the room: “Don’t breathe anymore! CPR!”
Apparently, however, the resuscitation efforts only began after Mutombo was taken out of the room onto a front lawn. The resuscitation attempts lasted more than twenty minutes. Eventually he was taken to the intensive care unit of the Vivantes Klinikum in Spandau.
Mutombo’s continuing life-threatening conditions prompted Vivantes doctors to transfer him to the Charité five days after his hospitalization, where he died on 6 October without regaining consciousness.
The brother of the deceased learned of the events from the caregivers, albeit much later. In a subsequent conversation with him about the officials’ brutal behavior, the supervisor is said to have made a comparison with the murder of George Floyd Jr. in the United States.
Floyd was strangled by a police officer who pressed his knee to his neck with all of his body weight. When this became public through a video recording, waves of mass protests swept the United States for weeks. Workers and young people from all over the world have expressed their solidarity.
The condemnation of racist police violence by a large part of the population is why police officers and authorities in all countries of the world, including Germany, want to prevent witnesses or even video recordings of their brutal actions.
After his brother’s death, Mutombo Mansamba turned to ReachOut and the public. As the incident caused a stir across the federal border, investigations into the actions of the officers involved were launched. An autopsy should also clarify whether death is related to the brutality suffered. Their result is not yet known.
At the latest, after it became clear that Mutombo would not survive the police operation, the authorities began to cover him up. This shows the chronology of the trials after Mutombo was transferred to the Charité.
Five days after his admission to the Vivantes hospital, on 18 or 19 September, Mutombo was transferred to the Charité university hospital. On September 20, the man in a coma was admitted to the neurological ward. It is certainly no coincidence that the police authorities are now investigating the actions of the sixteen officers involved. The next day, on September 21, Mutombo Mansamba was informed for the first time of the incident and of his brother’s condition – by the doctors of the Charité, because they needed his permission to put an end to such life support measures. Berliner Zeitung reported.
Regardless, Police Chief Barbara Slowik, who was installed in 2018 by infamous Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD), found herself in front of cameras earlier last week and certified her employees “no misconduct. “.
According to the Berlin police authorities, Mutombo “resisted” being carried with him and offered “massive resistance” with “kicks, punches and attempts to bite” and even with handcuffs. While this is the case, ReachOut’s Biplap Basu points out, “If someone is overwhelmed by 16 police officers and some are sitting on their bodies, the only option they have is to hold out because they feel their lives are at stake.”
It was really about his life.
Kupa Ilunga Medard Mutombo is doubly one of the marginalized groups most vulnerable to deadly police violence. Various studies and the work of aid organizations for victims of violence show that people in “exceptional psychological situations”, as well as non-Germans and the homeless, often suffer disproportionately from police violence.
The police consider the mentally ill “deprived of civil rights and outlaws” and attacks against them are always justified by the fact that they have become aggressive. “We can’t let this lie hold,” Basu said.
The news site Netzpolitik.org Notesthat of at least 306 victims of reunification, “an impressive number of people” were shot by the police “in their homes”. “In many cases” the victims found themselves in an “exceptional psychological situation”. These figures do not include police violence deaths without the use of a pistol or taser.
Recent victims reportedly include a “confused” homeless man from Dortmund. He died on October 19 from an electric shock given to him by a police officer with his taser. In August, three people were killed by police violence in the same state in one week. All three suffered from mental health problems. Two of them were shot dead, the third died the next day from injuries sustained from being brutally pinned to the ground and from the use of pepper spray.
Daniel Scherschin, 31 and schizophrenic since he was 16, died in Regensburg on March 20 during a police operation. He was also “pinned” to the ground using “legal force” and his feet tied until he could not breathe.
Police brutality is almost on the agenda in Berlin too. Just a few weeks ago, the racist behavior of Berlin police officers towards a Syrian family sparked a storm of outrage.
“We have fundamental structural problems in dealing with the illegal use of force by the police,” said criminologist Prof. Tobias Singelnstein of the Ruhr University of Bochum in the documentary “Government – When police officers become perpetrators” in the political magazine Kontraste.
Nationwide, on-duty police officers commit at least 12,000 cases of “illegal police violence” each year, according to Dr. Singelnstein stated in the interim report of his Kviapol research project in 2019.
However, only 2,000 such cases are reported each year because the victims have no hope of getting justice. And even in these few cases, less than two percent go to court. “There are less than one percent of reported cases,” says the criminologist. There is a basic assumption in the prosecutor’s office that charges against police officers for personal injury are “usually unwarranted”.
The rampant police violence, deliberately covered up and promoted by the state and politicians, is a warning to workers and young people. Behind the police brutalization are the irreconcilable class antagonisms in capitalism, which have come to a head as a result of the crown pandemic and arms and war policies. The ruling class is reacting to growing social and political opposition with increasing violence.
