The Berlin police are in need of explanation. Despite the authorities’ efforts to keep a “textbook on pain grips” from the publicwas published via the FragdenStaat platform. It contains instructions on how police officers can effectively attack sensitive parts of their counterparts’ bodies.
The techniques described are very painful and highly controversial. Already in 2023, the acting police chief Barbara Slowik Meisel defended herself after repeated allegations, by flatly denying that pain grips are taught to the police. The leaked teaching documents speak a different language.
Cross bondage grip, thumb press, arm extension lever: the close combat arsenal is large. The brochure includes around a dozen pain-causing “leverage, pressure point and squeezing techniques” that police officers are taught.
For example, when officers lead someone away on their back with a twisted wrist, this is the “hand flexion lever.” Optionally, this can be done “with head fixation”, in which one hand is placed under the nose from behind, where there is a particularly sensitive pressure point. There is also a picture in the booklet in which two people demonstrate the handle, with their name above it. “Note: Threat” is exemplary under the “pressure point and squeezing techniques” that should be “accompanied by verbal support.”
Grip the genitals
The manual is ostensibly intended for “operational self-defense.” However, it lists the techniques as “arrest, control and transport techniques” and also addresses the police approach to sit-ins. The textbook recommends the hand bending grip here. “If necessary, the threat of immediate coercion (sic!) should be threatened again.”
It is noteworthy that the training documents do not provide any information about physical risks or consequential damage caused by the handles. Disproportionate use of the handles leads to broken bones and damage to joints and nerves.
The techniques presented in the documents come from the martial arts and self-defense system Ju-Jutsu. While competitors there have the opportunity to make their opponent stop at any time by tapping, victims of police violence do not have this or comparable options. Screams are not a signal for the police to give up. In addition, compared to the use of the holds in jujutsu fights, the police instruction booklet is expanded to include some unsportsmanlike techniques, including the genital hold: “The genital area can be grabbed/hit/poked.”
In response to a taz request, the police confirmed the authenticity of the document. “The operational training manual shown was teaching support for Berlin police teaching staff who had already been trained and certified to teach,” said a spokesman. The term “pain grips” is not accurate, said the spokesman. “They can cause pain if the people affected by the measure do not follow the movement impulse.” For example, by intentionally slouching, stiffening or otherwise resisting.
Loss of the element of surprise
The approximately 20-page document replaced 2020 a “operational training manual” that was already leaked via FragdenStaat at the time. Both documents are available to the public via the “Portal for Freedom of Information”.
Lawyers had previously tried to free the secret documents through a lawsuit and have them legally examined. However, the Berlin police classified the manual as confidential because it allowed “conclusions to be drawn about the current organization of the security authorities, the way in which they obtain information and current training methods,” as can be seen from the grounds of the lawsuit. In practice, this leads to the “loss of the element of surprise and enables preparation or resistance to police access”.
The plaintiffs counter this by saying that the surprise effect of pain grips is limited anyway, because the “lawful use of pain grips according to police law principles” must first be threatened – and that their “years of use practice has been scientifically documented”. However, the court did not follow the plaintiffs’ request to publish the brochure. Which is why the “leak” via the Freedom of Information portal occurred.
Nothing surprising
In itself, what is in the manual is “nothing surprising,” says left-wing scene lawyer Lukas Theune. The contents of the manual “concur with what has been observed; our mandates often experience this.” The Berlin police’s teaching material shows that police practice systematically violates applicable law. In practice, painful grips often correspond to the legal definition of torture and therefore violate the constitutionally enshrined “prohibition of ill-treatment of detainees”. Accordingly, it is “crass” that the police train – and use – the pain grips without any legal basis, says Theune.
The police naturally take a different legal opinion and consider the use of pain grips to be fundamentally legal: “As long as the use of intervention techniques takes proportionality into account, their use is legally permissible,” said the police spokesman.
But this is often not the case either. Just a few weeks ago The Higher Administrative Court found the official use of painkillers against a climate activist to be unlawful. The officers could have simply carried away the demonstrator who did not defend himself.