Wilfried’s Not a Bad Guy

“I hope things could be a little better in the world. There’s poverty in Africa, but there’s also poverty in Germany. So many kids aren’t eating. It’s very sad. I think that’s also what the demonstrators have in mind”.

- Wilfried

We met right by the fence’s entrance. Yeah, that fence. I somehow managed to get through the three security checkpoints leading up to the gate and popped in for a chat with Wilfried. He’s one of the 16 000 police officers you might happen to bump into during the G8 summit in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region. Truckloads of them have already arrived, even though there’s not much action here yet. (Try not to think about how much it might cost to pay all these guys while they’re loafing around.)

Yeah. So Wilfried’s a nice guy. He’s the easygoing type, jokes around with his colleagues. No signs of stress before the big week. “You know what? I’m retiring next year, so I just hope I’ll stay healthy and be able to travel. What else can a man wish?”, he asks. Spent over forty years working, not always as a police officer, but invariably with people. “I love people. In principle, everyone’s good and that’s how I see my life and my work. I hope nothing bad is going to happen here this week.”

Wilfried’s not complaining about work: he’ll be doing overtime this week and will get the fat paycheck that comes with it. “This whole thing brought a lot of jobs here, and there isn’t that much money in the region. If it hadn’t been here, they would have set the summit somewhere else anyway”, adds the Rostocker.

Wilfried’s not a bad guy. He just happens to be living in a really strange system. A system that allows 12,5 million euros to be spent on a fence. This fence is a rather irritating symbol for many people, not to mention what’s actually going to happen in Heiligendamm. And the latest reports state it’ll even be forbidden to approach it during the summit.

For the police, the five or ten-kilometer breathing space they’re asking for around the fence is reasonable. For the demonstrators, it’s pure provocation. Under these circumstances, the clashes are very, very predictable, whether the police officers are good or bad.

What happens next? The media will blow every incident out of proportion, the authorities will say: “see, we told you so”, and everyone will try to forget that all that money could have been spent on something that would actually have been useful for the region.

And then, what if nothing happened? What if no one showed up at the fence? What if the 16 000 police officers spent the whole week taking coffee breaks? The authorities would probably say: “see, it wasn’t that bad” and “better safe than sorry”, and everyone would try to forget that all that money could have been spent on something that would actually have been useful for the region.

Call it catch-22 if you want, but we’re all stuck in it – the authorities, Wilfried and his colleagues, the protestors, the media and even those who decide to stay home.