Migrant sex attack fears on New Years Eve force German cops to scour social media for details of organised attacks
GERMAN cops have introduced a social media squad to monitor asylum seeker activity in the run-up to New Year - as fears of another mass sex attack rise.
The move comes after an investigation revealed that a migrant mob had organised themselves using social media when they converged on Cologne for a horrendous group sex attack that police were not equipped to deal with.
German Police Commissioner Sonja E. explained how women only avoided being raped during the New Years eve sexual frenzy by refugee mobs because they were wearing tights.
The 26-year-old policewoman, whose surname was withheld as she was giving evidence in a public hearing, told how she helped four traumatised victims of the attacks near Cologne Cathedral and around central station.
"They broke down completely and just wept," she said. "They were completely overwhelmed".
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She added that some victims were surrounded by as many as 50 men at a time, who were lifting up their skirts and and grabbing their breasts.
"The men pulled up their short dresses and grabbed their buttocks and breasts.
"The four women I spoke with said the men attempted to penetrate into their bottoms and vaginas with their fingers. But it did not happen because they were all wearing tights."
But this year they will not face the same problem after it was revealed that they are setting up a special unit to monitor migrant social media activity, in the hope that police can anticipate and act on movements before they become a problem.
A Cologne police spokesperson said: "Interpreters, language and cultural mediators are now observing the social networks. They will also support the work of the 1,500 policemen during New Year’s Eve."
The officers will be deployed at all major railway stations in the North Rhine-Westphalia’s cities including Dusseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Cologne as well as other potential trouble spots. The airports, as well as the trains, will be supervised with uniformed as well as plainclothes cops as well.
They are also planning to extend the use of CCTV cameras to monitor crowds. And police officers are going to be given body cameras, additional lighting will be put up and there will be helicopters.
In addition to all the above, a special team of experts in managing crowds has been put together. They have been asked to create a strategy to avoid a repeat of last year's mob violence.
However politicians have warned that the estimated budget of 400,000 EUR (336.831 GBP) put aside to tackle the problem will not suffice for the extensive measures they plan to introduce.
Last year, the migrant mob also broke beer bottles and attack each other in a night where violence was "unusually high" in the city.
"I have never seen such brutally violent crime before," the Commissioner said.
"There were rockets and smoke in the air everywhere, people threw firecrackers at each other. That was not normal."
In September this year, German police set up a four-man migrant crime unit specifically designed to target asylum seekers.
The team has been deployed in the town of Beitigham-Bissingen, 14 miles south of Stuttgart, to deal with the rise of violence, sexual assaults and robbery involving migrants in Germany.
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