A task force against the glue used by environmentalists to protest

The police forces of the German Lands in 2022 found themselves with a new, unexpected problem to deal with: glue. Precisely the glue used by activists Of Letzte Generation (Last generation) to stick to the asphalt of roads and highways and create traffic blocks that cause kilometre-long queues. Or to disrupt the air traffic of airports where they find a way to access the runways and stick to the pavement.

By January 24, the anniversary of the first action in Berlin, the environmental group had caused 1,250 roadblocks across Germany, with about 800 participants, then almost always stopped by the police. “Releasing” people from the asphalt and then forcibly taking them away before last year was not part of the routine of the Polizei, which was not even well equipped to do so. As they explain operational technical unit of Berlin which have been christened “Asphalt” it comes to intervene with vegetable oil.

The oil (olive, rapeseed, sunflower, for example) is slowly applied to the skin glued to the asphalt using a spatula, a brush, a disposable syringe without a needle or a gauze bandage. Then the glued body parts are slowly detached from the surface to which they are attached by gentle wrist movements. Generally this is enough, but there was also a case – as the Berlin police told the Berliner Zeitung – in which an activist had to be “removed from the road” along with a piece of asphalt. The situation becomes more complicated when activists stick to concrete, in this case the presence of a doctor together with the technical task force may be necessary, and the intervention requires at least an hour of work.

Police all over Germany are organizing to handle the problem of “stuck” climate activists with solvent oil in 30-90 minutes of work. In Bavaria two regional special units were created in Munich and Murnau, called “Glue-on-Teams” who are available 24 hours a day to quickly remove activists from the road and to quickly avoid or resolve traffic obstacles. In the Baden-Wurttemberg, where the Polizei has already had to deal with 22 actions by activists attached to the road surface, the agents say “we are well prepared”.

After more than 1000 hours of interventions in this context and almost as many dedicated to solving traffic blocks – according to the president of the German police union Ralf Kusterer the most exhausting thing about the problem – the officers now know what they have to do.

But the interventions so far have already cost the coffers of the Land in southwest Germany the beauty of around 60,650 euros, also because the streets then have to be cleaned of oil and glue. According to the Ministry of the Interior of the same Land since March last year the police departments have been provided with recommendations on how to behave both from a legal and a practical point of view in this type of situation. The theme is included in the training courses, also for the special teams which are used in particular at events. Also there North Rhine-Westphalia it is arming itself against climate activists who stick to the asphalt.

Currently about 10,000 police officers are following special compulsory training courses which also takes place electronically. The tool at their disposal is always the same: vegetable oil, “aid” that would have been unthinkable a year ago, when cooking oil was among the foods in shortage at the start of the war in Ukraine and when almost all supermarkets had rationed purchases to one bottle per family and prices had doubled.