Berlin imposes ID at outdoor pools hoping to thwart brawls

Berlin's city government announced on Thursday that it would require ID to enter outdoor pools.

The move comes after repeated outbreaks of violence at the facilities.

Visitors will be required to purchase personalized tickets in advance online and identify themselves at the entrance.

The city announced that at two pools, located in the Neukölln and Kreuzberg neighborhoods, video surveillance and mobile police guards would be in place.

Last weekend, a fight broke out among 50 youths at a slide at a Neukölln pool.

The pool has been shut since the incident.

Authorities have decided to remove access to slides and diving boards at the Neukölln pool, as well as in Pankow.

The move was announced by Mayor Kai Wegner of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Interior Senator Iris Spranger of the Social Democrats (SPD).

What did officials say about the measure?

"We will make sure that everyone who comes to an outdoor pool is registered in advance," Wegner emphasized.

"This is the right path, because at the end of the day we need to start issuing bans at these pools," he declared in comments made at the Kreuzberg pool.

"It's very often repeat offenders, who terrorize bathers, terrorize children and families. And we will not permit that any longer," Wegner said. "We do not want any lawless zones in our public pools and we are going to make it clear that we will not accept that."

He also said that the city would make sure the pool is "safer from the outside" and that people cannot jump protective fencing.

Spranger, meanwhile, said that Berlin authorities were planning to hire more security personnel where necessary, saying "the money is there." 

The GDP police trade union representative for the Berlin area, Benjamin Jendro, told BerlinTV that this issue did not emerge in 2023.

"Every summer the conversation returns to clashes in Berlin's open-air pools," he said, adding that in high temperatures and an enclosed space, it "does not take much" for tempers to flare among young men who might have consumed alcohol. 

However, he rejected calls for a permanent police presence at the facilities, arguing that the task was not suitable for police.

"How do we honestly imagine this? That we're going to station 100 or so officers at the poolside?" he asked. 

"Quite honestly, that's impossible from a labor law perspective in this heat, and police have other tasks to attend to in this city and our officers are not pool attendants," he said.

This report was written in part with material from the DPA news agency.

Edited by: Mark Hallam