A month after the Left won the election to Berlin's House of Representatives, interior ministers in Brandenburg and Baden-Württemberg openly courted police officers from the capital. Focus Online reports that 72 officers have since enquired about or applied for a transfer out of Berlin. A survey of the states found that 58 wanted to move toward Baden-Württemberg and ten toward Bavaria. Berlin officially counts only seven transfer applications since the beginning of September. In the previous year, 22 officers in total transferred out of Berlin.
Benjamin Jendro, union spokesperson for the Berlin police, told Focus Online that the number did not surprise the union, but that so many requests in a few weeks was a lot, and that the force would have a problem if the pattern took hold. He said that if it happened every year, a Berlin police section would be gone in personnel terms within two years. Interior ministers had previously agreed not to recruit one another's officers. Jendro said that rule against so-called Raub-Ernennungen, predatory appointments, was now obsolete. He added that a shortage of officers in the capital would be felt across the country, and that the Left's victory had brought great concern about how the city would continue. Berlin's operational workload is already the highest in Germany, and he said other states were sensing a chance to take urgently needed recruits and established colleagues from Berlin.
Manuel Hagel, deputy minister-president and interior minister of Baden-Württemberg, warned after the election of a left-wing clan mayoress who wanted to cut police resources and powers. The CDU politician said Baden-Württemberg knew the value of its officers, and that anyone who stood for security, freedom and the rule of law was welcome there at any time, each person, whenever they came.
CDU politician Jan Redmann advertised on Instagram to people from Berlin or Saxony-Anhalt who want to become police officers and are worried about the political future of their home state, inviting them to look at Brandenburg. He said Brandenburg invests in its police, unlike others. Brandenburg's interior minister underlined that the state wanted to become even more effective against clans, organised crime and extremists of all kinds.
As of 11 April 2023, about 27,000 people worked for the Berlin police, of whom about 18,500 were assigned to core police duties. The capital has the highest density of police officers of any German state.
In its programme for the House of Representatives election, the Left complained of police arbitrariness and called for police work to be replaced by social work wherever possible. The party also wanted to reduce the number of officers, saying it would examine how staffing could be adjusted to the level of other city-states, plus extra needs linked to the capital under the capital financing treaty.