Calls for inquiry after German police kill black man outside nightclub

Civil rights activists in Germany have demanded an independent inquiry into alleged police racism after an officer shot a 21-year-old black man from behind, killing him after an altercation outside a nightclub.

The 27-year-old officer has been suspended from duty over the shooting early on Sunday morning in the city of Oldenburg in north-west Germany pending a murder investigation, said state prosecutors. Fatal police shootings are relatively rare in Germany and prosecutors were quoted in local media as saying the suspension and investigation were “routine”.

The victim has not been identified by police due to data protection laws but media outlets and pressure groups have identified him as Lorenz A.

Police said in a statement that the man, a German citizen, aimed pepper spray at security staff outside the club after they refused him entry, hurting four people, and that he threatened others with a knife while running away.

When a patrol car tracked him down, police said he again used the pepper spray and approached the 27-year-old officer in a threatening manner. The policeman then opened fire.

A coroner’s report found that at least three bullets hit the man from behind: in the back of his head, torso and hip, local prosecutors said. A fourth shot is believed to have grazed his upper thigh. He later died in hospital.

The state interior minister Daniela Behrens said the autopsy results raised “serious questions and grave suspicions” that must be “unsparingly addressed and resolved”.

Police representatives warned against any rush to judgment. “There are racism accusations because the deceased was a person of colour,” Kevin Komolka, the state chair of the GdP police union, told the public broadcaster NDR. “There’s a mood developing painting police as trigger-happy hooligans.”

Prosecutors have begun evaluating security camera footage and audio recordings from the scene and said there was no indication that Lorenz A had threatened police with the knife he had with him. The officers’ body cameras were reportedly turned off.

Rights groups, which have organised a rally in Oldenburg on Friday, said the deadly shooting raised serious concerns.

The German chapter of Amnesty International said the killing “impacts an entire community and all those people in Germany affected by racism”. It said any investigation into the incident led by police would be biased. “We finally need independent investigation mechanisms that are not controlled by police or interior affairs authorities,” it said, citing “structural racism”.

The Black People in Germany Initiative (ISD) quoted friends and family of Lorenz, calling him an avid basketball player and a “fun-loving person who was full of energy”.

“Now he’s dead, killed by an institution that is supposed to protect us,” it said in a statement, joining the call for an independent investigation as well as a national complaints office for allegations of police racism.

The ‪Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which campaigns against extremism and racism in German society, also denounced what it said was not an isolated incident and questioned the police account that the officer had had grounds to fear for his life.

The gathering and march in Oldenburg, called by a Justice for Lorenz group with more than 15,000 followers on social media, is expected to draw at least 1,000 people, according to police. Similar vigils have been called in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Vienna.

The Black Lives Matter movement which was initiated after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 also led activists to turn a spotlight on German police. In September of that year, 29 officers in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia were temporarily suspended after their unit was found to have shared extreme rightwing content on a WhatsApp group including a collage of a refugee inside a gas chamber and the shooting of a young black person.

A 2024 study found that 30% of German police had heard colleagues make racist comments in the last year, with a marked rise in reported anti-Muslim sentiment.

An average of 10.5 people a year are shot dead by police in Germany, the news agency dpa said, citing figures collected by the trade journal Civil Rights and Police, with no clear upward or downward trend across the decades. However, last year there were 22 victims – more than twice the average – and this year there have already been 11 such cases reported.

In 2023, the last year statistics were available, Germany’s federal criminal police office reported a record number of incidents of violence against firefighters, police and emergency services workers.