At least 72 Berlin police officers have requested or applied for a transfer to another German state since the election to the Abgeordnetenhaus, according to a survey by Focus online. Across the whole of 2025, only 22 officers changed states.
Most interest is in the southwest. Fifty-eight officers signalled interest in Baden-Württemberg, ten in Bavaria, three in Thuringia and one in Bremen. Baden-Württemberg's interior minister, Manuel Hagel of the CDU, had openly recruited officers from Berlin.
Die Linke won the 2026 election to Berlin's state parliament. The party has long taken a critical view of police work, including checks without a specific cause and video surveillance in public places. In recent weeks there has also been extensive discussion of an alleged closeness between Die Linke and radical opponents of Israel and clan structures.
Berlin police so far know of only seven official applications since 6 September. Officers who enquire in another state do not yet have to declare that step in Berlin.
Benjamin Jendro of the GdP police union in Berlin told Focus that the number did not surprise the union, but that so many requests in only a few weeks was a lot, and that a wider pattern would become a problem. He said that if the same outflow happened every year, Berlin would lose the staffing of one police section within two years. About 18,500 officers perform operational duty in the capital. A move used to be almost impossible because interior ministers had ruled out recruiting one another's staff. Jendro said that understanding now appeared obsolete.
Hagel is still seeking personnel and said that anyone who stands for security, freedom and the rule of law is always welcome in Baden-Württemberg. He is particularly interested in experienced investigators working against organised crime. Brandenburg's interior minister, Jan Redmann of the CDU, is aiming mainly at younger officers because the state wants to create 440 additional posts.
Both ministers point to the Berlin Left's election programme, which says the party wants to stop further costly expansion of police equipment and redistribute the funds, and to bring staffing down to the level of other city-states. Berlin crime statistics show that the number of officers who were victims of violence has risen by about 50 percent since 2019.
Former mayor Franziska Giffey of the SPD has called for a membership vote on a coalition with Die Linke. In an Instagram post she said that forming a government in Berlin was a fundamental directional decision for the SPD and should be carried by the breadth of its members. She demanded a vote of all Berlin SPD members on the coalition agreement to be negotiated in the coming weeks, and said that how the wishes and promises would be financed must weigh much more heavily in a budget that actually requires savings.