Pixelated manhunt in Germany: protecting perpetrators instead of security?

The police in Mannheim are looking for an attacker – with a covered face. Criminals at an advantage?

It sounds like a bad joke, but it is sad reality. The Mannheim police have launched a public manhunt for a man who attacked a married couple on Heidelberg's Neckarmünzplatz. The perpetrator had noticed the woman wearing a T-shirt with a Star of David on it, grabbed her by the shirt and injured her. When the husband came to his wife's aid, the attacker also punched him in the face.

But instead of showing a clear mugshot of the attacker, the police have presented us with a picture of the perpetrator - with a pixelated face. Yes, you read that correctly: a pixelated face in a public manhunt. And that's not all: the perpetrator, according to the description, has an "Arab phenotype" and a distinctive tattoo on his right arm. Anyone who thinks evil of this is a scoundrel. In today's world of politically correct hypersensitivity, it is reasonable to suspect that people wanted to avoid upsetting any section of the population at all costs. Who needs a successful manhunt when you can behave politically cleanly?

Of course, there is a small link in the small print to "unpixelated" pictures of the perpetrator - but let's be honest: how many people who read the wanted notice will actually click on the link? Instead of showing the perpetrator clearly to as many people as possible, one obstacle after another is put in place, as if there was no real interest in finding the perpetrator.

Political correctness or protection of the public?
The most absurd thing about it: who comes up with the crazy idea of ​​pixelating the face of a wanted perpetrator in a wanted notice? It's like drawing the wanted person differently from the descriptions of the eyewitnesses in identikit images. Maybe we should put the perpetrator in a clown mask before we publish the wanted photo. That way he won't upset anyone and he will remain anonymous! Or maybe the wanted photos could be completely blacked out - "out of consideration"? Or how about if we only show a black silhouette instead of a picture of the perpetrator, so that no one feels their privacy is being violated? Or why not just use pictograms to search for suspects? A stick figure as the perpetrator - no one will think that anyone is suspicious.

According to the Mannheim police, the pixelation always takes place on social media to make sure that the identification information is deleted once the search process is over. The unpixelated images are found on the website. These people clearly have no idea how the Internet works.

Source: Reitschuster