Is There a Police Force in Mini-Munich?
An excerpt from ‘Die Kinderstadt: Eine Schule des Lebens’, Gerd Grüneisl and Wolfgang Zacharias (1989). English translation by Daniel Fetz.
Mini-Munich and the police, this is an old issue, one that had its roots and, in a sense, its resolution back in 1985.
At the time, the initial plan didn’t include a police force, well aware of what discussions that would trigger. And sure enough, the calls came, again and again, at town hall meetings and election speeches: ‘We need police for the streets, to make them safer, especially because of the reckless taxi drivers, the accidents, and so on.’ It came as it had to come: the city council decided to establish a police force, and the next day eight police positions were advertised at the employment office and quickly filled, even as full-time jobs — a secure position, civil servants, so to speak.
On the streets, things did not get quieter — quite the opposite. The police officers began checking IDs, driver’s licenses, tried to detain and arrest those involved in accidents, wanted an escape-proof prison, imposed fines, caused a great deal of commotion, wild chases swept through the city, there were brawls: police means “action” after all, and as a police officer one didn’t have to follow traffic rules, while on duty. The decisive thing, however: those who had signed up as police officers were primarily the ones who, just the day before, as taxi drivers, had been the reason for the calls for police in the first place. So now friends, competitors, rougher children suddenly found themselves facing each other in antagonistic roles. And Sepp the cab driver won’t let himself be pushed around or ripped off by his buddy Karli — also a cabbie yesterday, a cop today. That had to be sorted out by force if necessary...
It soon became clear to the citizens and the city council that something had gone wrong, complaints piled up for two or three days. What to do? You can’t just simply repeal a resolution — loss of face, press criticism, self-respect...
Without any adult involvement, the city councillors then had a brilliant idea and acted on it: “We need more qualified police officers, and we’ll select them personally, by means of an intelligence test!” It went like this: The police candidates had to wait in front of the locked council chamber. Only one at a time was allowed to enter and found himself facing the entire city council of ten people. The communicative power dynamics of the situation were clear.
The councillors said: “We have ten questions, the answers will be evaluated by each council member with points, and at, say, 40 points you’ll be hired as a police officer.” Sounds good, sounds fair — but it wasn’t quite: They had agreed beforehand that no candidate should receive more than, say, 39 points. And so it went, no one passed: “We’re sorry, unfortunately no intelligent candidates...”
The streets became much quieter again, and a few days later the police could be officially abolished with the justification of “no qualified applicants” (in their place, detectives increasingly became active as small independent contractors...).
In any case: among the children who also shaped the politics in the years that followed, this incident had deeply embedded itself as a formative experience, and whenever the demand for police came up later, someone would bring up this memory as a counter-argument, the “veterans” would nod, and a majority for police never came about.
The young politicians themselves had gotten us educators off the hook on a very delicate problem — one that, no matter how you try to solve it, will always provoke criticism.