Germany: Train conductor's death highlights rise in violence

"It is an act that has shocked Germany: a Deutsche Bahn employee checked the ticket of a man traveling alone on a regional train, who turned out not to have a valid ticket. When the train conductor asked him to leave the train at the next stop, he was attacked and punched repeatedly. The train conductor lost consciousness, had to be resuscitated, and died a day later in a hospital from a brain hemorrhage as a result of blunt force trauma."

"The alleged perpetrator is now in custody. Statistics show that last year alone, nearly 3,000 railway employees were attacked. According to the German Ministry of the Interior, an average of five employees were physically assaulted and four threatened every day. "I don't check tickets because I want to get home alive," a conductor told the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper."

"However, this threatening development is by no means new, violence researcher Jonas Rees told DW. "We have seen a steady increase in violence since 2015. The new normal for at least the last 10 years has been that it is virtually part of everyday life for employees to be verbally abused, insulted, threatened, or even physically attacked," he said. "The crucial point, however, is not whether our society is becoming increasingly brutal, but rather what we have become accustomed to in terms of violence and misconduct over the last few years, according to Rees."

A Deutsche Bahn conductor was attacked and later died after asking a passenger without a valid ticket to leave a regional train. The alleged perpetrator is in custody. Last year nearly 3,000 railway employees were attacked, with an average of five physically assaulted and four threatened each day. Violence against railway staff has steadily increased since 2015 and has become a routine risk for employees over the past decade. Incidents occur most often when passengers are intoxicated, when trains are overcrowded or delayed, and around major events and certain days of the week. Some conductors now avoid checking tickets out of fear for their safety.

Read at www.dw.com