A trial for the assault on a group of young people in front of the Thuringian State Chancellery showed how poor the quality of the cameras installed there is. They will now be exchanged.
Erfurt (dpa/th) – The Thuringian government headquarters is currently being equipped with new security technology. The cameras that played a role in a trial before the Erfurt district court are also to be replaced. Renovation work is currently underway in the central office building of the Thuringian State Chancellery in Erfurt, a spokeswoman for the state government told the German Press Agency. The cameras were important in investigating an attack on a group of young people in July 2020 right in front of the State Chancellery. However, the quality of the video recordings had made the work of the police more difficult, said an officer on the witness stand before the Erfurt Regional Court, who was responsible for evaluating the images.
The recordings of the cameras would not have allowed, for example, to clearly identify the faces of the suspects. “Only with the recordings: We couldn’t have recognized anyone there,” the officer said.
However, the replacement of the cameras is not due to the criticism of the poor quality of the recordings expressed in the process, said the spokeswoman for the state government. The work had been planned for a long time.
The official in front of the district court in Erfurt said that he and his colleagues could not have changed the poor quality of the recordings, even through post-processing. Some of the recordings were “so milky” that “we couldn’t save much anymore,” said the police officer.
The robbery took place in the so-called Hirschgarten, which is directly adjacent to the State Chancellery. Some of the victims were seriously injured in the incident. According to the investigators, an initial suspicion of a right-wing motivation had not been substantiated. There was clear criticism of this assessment by the public prosecutor’s office of the motive.
According to the spokeswoman, the State Chancellery’s cameras record suspected crimes around five to ten times a year. “This is mostly property damage such as destruction and graffiti as well as urinating on the house walls or entrance areas,” said the spokeswoman. It is unclear which of these alleged crimes can be solved and what role the camera images play in this: “The Thuringian State Chancellery does not receive any information about the results of the investigations or the outcome of investigations.”