A 63-year-old Turkish man was left critically injured after being shot by a police officer in the German province of Bavaria according to reports dated April 1, 2021. The man, identified as Habeş Temiz, had confronted police after refusing to leave the premises of his neighbor’s property. Temiz, who is reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's disease had become confrontational and was swinging a toy truck when police first used tear gas and, when that failed, followed with a round of warning shots and then three shots targeting the man. Temiz was then hospitalized and his condition remains guarded.
While the shooting is currently under investigation, German police have been repeatedly of harassing many of the the country's three million Turkish immigrants. With a population of 81 million people, Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France and anti-Muslim hate crimes have been frequently reported. In 2018 alone, there were 910 known incidents, including 48 attacks on mosques alone though this represents a slight decline from previous years.
According to one recent report by professor Tobias Singelnstein of Ruhr-University Bochum, institutionalized racism remains of a structural problem among the German police, with reports of racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic insults, confirmed by police officers and victim testimonies. Witnesses interviewed for the report have also accused some officers of going on deliberate "Turk hunts" in which they target Turkish immigrants and provoke them into verbal or physical reactions to which the officers respond with deadly force. While it remains unclear whether this latest incident will reflect that trend, critics are already calling for better police training for dealing with people suffering from mental health issues that might lead to confrontations.
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