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Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Torching Cars Called Common Crime in Germany


A German man whose mother was threatened with deportation is accused of a crime that has become a popular way in Germany for young people to express anger: burning cars.
A car owner tries to retrieve possessions from his vehicle as it burns in an arson fire early Monday in a parking lot in Los Angeles.

Harry Burkhart, 24, watched as his mother was arrested last week on a warrant from their native Germany on fraud charges that include not paying for breast-augmentation surgery.
Two days later, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck alleges, Burkhart began a nighttime rampage of arson attacks that terrorized the city.

Authorities have yet to disclose why they believe Burkhart, whom Sheriff Lee Baca called the "most dangerous arsonist in Los Angeles County," set the fires over four days.
"He loved his mom, the way every son loves his mom," said Shlomo Elady, a hair stylist who cut Burkhart's hair.

In court Tuesday, Dorothee Burkhart repeatedly asked a magistrate judge where her son was and wondered aloud whether he was dead or had disappeared.
Harry Burkhart was being held without bail.

"What did you do to my son?" she asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Nagle.
The burning of cars is a common phenomenon in Berlin and also other northern German cities such as Hamburg, which are magnets for young, "left-wing" idealists protesting the establishment, gentrification of their neighborhoods and globalization.

On May 1, Labor Day in Europe, residents with especially flashy cars move them to paid garages or to neighborhoods deemed safer.

For example, in October, a man in Berlin was arrested for torching 100 luxury cars, and 470 cars had been set on fire in the city by that time last year, the BBC reported.

"He wasn't motivated by politics but rather social envy," senior police official Oliver Stepien said. "He said in essence: 'I've got debts, my life stinks, and others with fancy cars are better off and they deserve this.' "
Websites such as http://www.brennende-autos.de/ mark where cars in Berlin have been torched as well as the models — nearly all high-end cars.

Recently, certain bookstores in Berlin were threatened by police with closure for carrying "seditious" literature that contained information on how to burn cars, according to pamphlets in the stores reading "Solidarity with Leftist Bookstores."

Hamburg criminologist Ingeborg Legge, 56, told weekly German magazine Der Spiegel that she believes many arsonists are part of groups with certain things in common: a fundamentally aggressive position toward the state, too much strength for their own good, dissatisfaction with their current situation and a vague feeling of rage that they sometimes direct toward themselves and sometimes against external objects — such as cars.

Adapted from USAToday
Published by Gusti Putra at: 10:23 AM
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