Killings by German police at highest level in decades

German police officers have already fatally shot significantly more people while on duty this year than in previous years, according to an analysis of police reports by dpa.

Reports indicate that 17 people have died in police shootings since January. In the majority of cases, the fatal shots were fired in situations where the officers encountered men or women who were in a distressed psychological condition or were already receiving treatment for mental illness.

Several of the people who were shot during police operations were carrying knives.

According to statistics from the specialist magazine "Bürgerrechte & Polizei" ("Civil Rights & Police"), the last time such a high number of people were shot by the police in Germany was in 1999, when 19 people were fatally shot during the course of the entire year.

Police gunshots killed 10 people in 2023, after 11 deaths in 2022 and eight deaths in 2021.

The case of a 31-year-old woman who was shot dead in a Munich supermarket made the headlines this year.

The police later announced that she had been admitted to a psychiatric ward three times by the police. She was known to the police for narcotics offences.

A 20-year-old woman died last Thursday in the central German town of Schwalmstadt. According to the police, the woman pointed an object at police officers that looked "confusingly similar" to a firearm.

Another person fatally shot by police in Germany this year was an 18-year-old Austrian who opened fire at the Israeli Consulate General in Munich and the nearby Nazi Documentation Center on September 5.