Advertisement
Advertisement
That kind of ploy is meant to protect the perpetrators, as German Police Union chairman, Rainer Wendt, explained to radio station NDR Info: "It is a collusion among the perpetrators that uses the crowd of people, darkness, and the surprise effect to get away with a crime without being recognized."Some pickpockets, who also harassed women in the process, were arrested at the same train station on January 3. However, whether these men were involved in what happened on New Year's Eve is still unclear.Cologne's mayor, Henriette Reker, suggests that women keep men at an arm's length and avoid walking with strangers. The hashtag #eineArmlänge (an arm's length) was trending yesterday on German-speaking Twitter, with numerous users calling this statement a misapplication of victim/perpetrator roles.What's clear is that witnesses are having a hard time recognizing perpetrators. "Imagine you're surrounded by men, they're all trying to grope you and you're just trying to protect your body. You'd hardly be able to say more about their faces than that they looked young and of North African descent," a spokeswoman for the Cologne Police Department explained to VICE.