25-06-06 // PREVENTING BRUTAL URBANISM – INTERVIEW WITH JÜRGEN MATHIES

5000 Years of Brutal Urbanism, p. 38-39

Bernd Upmeyer spoke on behalf of MONU with Jürgen Mathies, the Director of the Security Task Force for the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany. Mathies is the Executive police director and operating commissioner for the secretary of the interior in the federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia. He is responsible for police work across the state.

Bernd Upmeyer: Mr Mathies, you were the director of the managing committee that put together the security-masterplan for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. How does such a plan look like?
Jürgen Mathies: The managing committee was established by order of the Interior Secretaries of the German states. It included all of the police forces from the different states, the national police force and the Office of the Interior Secretary. First we looked at which topics we would have to especially keep an eye on. The first topic was dangers from hooliganism, secondly terrorism and extremism and the third was regular and organized crime that specializes in large events. We then divided this project team that already grown to 20 people into smaller teams that in consideration of these three topics worked on specific tasks. One subgroup worked on foreign country collaboration. That specifically involved collaborating with the police planning units of other countries and also coordinating the deployment of foreign police troops in Germany. One team dealt with the task of information exchange within our country and also with other countries and also the question of what kind of picture of the situation do we have during the World Cup? Yet another team was in charge of public relations and collaboration with the press. Team 5 was doing the operations management. That is what tasks do different police forces in Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne or Munich have to fulfill according to uniform standards? And finally team 6 was doing the actual work of crime fighting. All these parts in turn were incorporated into the police master-planning framework, which we updated several times.

BU: And how do you organize such an organizational structure? How do the police officers get to the places where they need to be – the dangerous areas?
JM: First you have to keep in mind that all of the 12 World Cup cities have a lot of experience when it comes to the policing aspect of soccer matches. With the exception of Leipzig, all the police forces have real experience in league games and also with international matches. So it was not our task to organize the everyday policing. Our task specifically was to organize what had to be done uniformly. In order for us to not only theoretically drift about without a reality check, four times during the preparation I invited all of the operating chief officers of all 12 police forces and we discussed the framework, so that what is written in the plan could also be put into reality. And it seems that by all accounts we were successful…

…the complete interview was published in MONU #5 on the topic of Brutal Urbanism on July 10, 2006.

Title: Preventing Brutal Urbanism
Project: Interview with Jürgen Mathies
Date: June 2006
Type: Commissioned interview
Topic: Brutal Urbanism
Organizer: MONU
Status: Published
Publications: MONU #5, P.30-33
Interviewer: Bernd Upmeyer