Contextualising Police Stops in Public Debates: Policy Turning-Points in Germany

This chapter looks at the political debates on police stops in Germany, starting in the 1970s when the 16 German states (Länder) established a model police law in order to better coordinate policing. As this model law established police authority to carry out suspicion-less stops, this can be perceived as a policy turning-point for police stops in Germany. Police authority for suspicion-less stops was even extended in the late 1990s, justified by the perceived need to compensate for the abolition of border controls within the Schengen area. The chapter shows that recent developments in connection with the Black Lives Matter movement triggered a controversial political debate on discriminatory police stops, but this has not yet substantially changed the police practice.