The German capital Berlin has extended knife bans after a series of shocking stabbings in public places.
On April 17, the city government announced that there would be a total ban of knives and other weapons on public trains, trams and buses.
The necessary law was to set be passed in the coming weeks. The city’s interior department said that the aim of the regulation was to extend the police’s control options, increase security and improve citizens’ sense of security.
Currently, the city has already instituted knife bans in three public hotspots – Leopoldplatz, Görlitzer Park and Kottbusser Tor.
Dirk Stettner, leader of the Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in the city’s parliament, has demanded a city-wide knife ban.
The CDU currently governed Berlin in a coalition with the Social Democratic Party as a junior partner.
“It does not make sense to me why anybody in Berlin has to run through the streets with a knife,” Stettler told news agency DPA on April 17.
“And I do not understand at all why we restrict police to only being allowed to carry out random checks in declared no-knife zones,” he added.
Stettler appealed to the incoming federal government to make the necessary changes to German weapons law that would allow Berlin to introduce a complete knife ban.
The police union GdP voiced support for Stettner’s proposal. Its leader Stephan Weh said the number of violent knife crime was “worryingly high”.
According to official statistics, 3,412 knife attacks were registered in Berlin in 2024 – almost 10 cases per day.
That was the second-highest number of all time, only narrowly surpassed by the year 2023 with 3,482 knife attacks. Some 88 per cent of the perpetrators were male and 58 per cent did not have German citizenship.
The discussion on knife crime prevention has come about after a series of highly publicised stabbings.
In the most shocking attack on April 12, a 43-year-old Syrian killed a 29-year-old German acquaintance on a moving subway train. The two men, both previously convicted of a series of violent and drug-related crimes, entered the U12 train at 4pm. Soon after, an altercation ensued during which the men jostled one another.
The Syrian then pulled a kitchen knife from his belt and stabbed his acquaintance through the heart.
The younger man managed to leave the train but died on the subway platform at Sophie-Charlotte-Platz.
When police officers tried to apprehend the attacker he tried to rush them. An officer shot the Syrian four times and he later died in hospital.
It later turned out the man had been imprisoned for stabbing his sister in the thigh in 2022 and threatening police officers.
