Recently, the Public Order Office has been receiving more and more anonymous reports (almost exclusively in the form of letters) about alleged or, where applicable, actual administrative offences or misconduct by citizens. As anonymous reports entail a number of problems, we would like to provide some information on this subject:
The public order office is always happy to receive any relevant information. Everyone has the right to have their report dealt with anonymously if they so wish. However, this makes the work of the public order office much more difficult. In the case of completely anonymous reports such as"Mr X from Y has done something illegal at ...., the public order office should please investigate this as quickly as possible. MfG a concerned citizen", we are usually not even able to fully comprehend the truth. In addition, we are deprived of the opportunity to ask specific questions, such as in the case of reports of repeated parking offences in the evening. In this case, it would be very helpful to specify the time of day when the offences occur most frequently in order to plan special operations.
Another problem is that the regulatory authority is almost never able to impose sanctions for such anonymous reports. Evidential offences cannot be reported without witnesses. So if Mr X from Y brought green waste into the forest on day Z, the public order office ultimately only sees the waste in the forest and can document it. However, a connection between the rubbish and Mr X cannot be established because an anonymous letter has no evidential value in court and the public order office did not see Mr X himself dumping rubbish. In this respect, these completely anonymous reports are of no use to the public order office. But that is a good thing, because in a constitutional state (Article 19 Paragraph 4 and Article 20 Paragraph 3 of the Basic Law), the presumption of innocence applies in the first instance. The other party must always be given the opportunity to be heard in order to comment on the alleged facts. Therefore, if a judge were to avoid high fines solely on the basis of anonymous accusations that cannot be verified on the spot and which are only contained in an anonymous letter, this would be contrary to the principle of the rule of law.
The public order office therefore does not investigate these completely anonymous reports, or only in exceptional cases. Let's have a constructive discussion if you notice any offences. We understand that it is very annoying when, for example, green waste or even inorganic waste is dumped in the forest. As a public order office, we are very interested in punishing these offences. The best way to do this is if you are prepared to testify to your observations and, if necessary, to do so before the (local) court as part of a possible fine hearing.
As already mentioned at the beginning, you naturally have the right to have your adverts treated anonymously by us. But please at least give us the opportunity to contact you if we have any queries. This alone is very helpful for the further processing of the proceedings.
Thank you for your understanding and assistance
Signed. Rapsch
Head of Department Department 4 - Order, Security, Trade, Cemeteries