Hot off the Press: Dream or Nightmare?
2 October 2025
The latest thematic issue of the historical journal Storia e regione / Geschichte und Region (edited by Michele Di Giorgio and Martin Göllnitz) examines the police forces of Italy and Germany after the Second World War through a practice-oriented lens. The contributions analyze policing practices from a spatial perspective, asking how police operated in different geographic contexts—cities, provinces, and regions—and how they sought to police these spaces and the people living there, and thus acting as producers of security or insecurity.
Within this framework, CISS Senior Researcher Marcel Schmeer has contributed the article “Dream or Nightmare? Contact Area Officers and the Beginnings of Community Policing in West Berlin during the 1970s.” The essay traces the introduction of contact area officers as an early experiment in community-oriented policing in 1970s West Berlin. It explores the conceptual foundations of this model, its implementation in practice, and the ambivalent public reactions ranging from approval to rejection. By highlighting the challenges and contradictions of “community-based” policing in an urban setting, the article reveals how debates over the everyday presence of police, trust, and security were already shaping police–citizen relations in the 1970s – issues that remain pressing in discussions today.
Further information can be found here.
