Extra surveillance, heavy police force to safeguard New Year's eve in Cologne
Xinhua, December 16, 2016 Adjust font size:
A year after the notorious sex assaults at 2016 New Year's eve shocked Cologne, Germany, local authority announced recently that 10 times the number of police it had last December will be deployed to safeguard the city's last day of 2016.
According to Cologne's security plan for the festival, 1,500 police officers, an additional 600 public order officers and "significantly more" private security workers will guard the city's upcoming New Year's eve.
Last year, Cologne police received over 1,000 complaints, including hundreds of sexual assaults and robberies during the New Year celebrations.
Most victims were women and many perpetrators, who were reportedly asylum seekers, were at large.
Cologne police were criticized of not being alert and quick enough to respond to the mass assaults and since then the mood in Germany toward the refugees from the Middle East and the North Africa shifted.
This year, extra video cameras are being installed and Cologne police also takes in more Arab translators to help potential cases.
Furthermore, fireworks will be banned at main areas where the reported assaults took place last year.
After Cologne mass assaults, more terror attacks in summer -- an axe attack on a train and a suicide bombing at a music festival -- fueled Germans' anxiety over Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy to refugees, dragging down her domestic popularity.
According to the German Interior Ministry, about 210,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Germany by the end of September, compared to 890,000 migrants and refugees in 2015. Endi