Magdeburg Christmas Market Mass Killing: Where Were the Merklesteins?

“Bollards [vehicle barriers] had been put up to protect the area but one local politician noted that they did not extend all the way around the perimeter, with a gap left for a tram line.” https://t.co/TbylitLURl

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) December 21, 2024

"Merklesteins," or Merkle stones, is the name the German press gave to the vehicle barriers that appeared around Christmas markets after a vehicle attack was committed at the Berlin market in 2016.

For a couple years after that I did annual posts on the increasingly efficient and often aesthetic Merklesteins that went up in German cities and elsewhere. See this one, for instance, or click on the Merklestein tab below. 

Those barriers had gotten pretty good, and they ought to have precluded more vehicle attacks. So I was highly interested in how the attacker yesterday was able to drive into the Magdeburg market seemingly with no problem.

The answer is in today's UK and German news: it was because the Magdeburg city authorities left a gap in the market's anti-ram barrier perimeter that the attacker could exploit. 

From today's:The Telegraph:

Local authorities in Magdeburg are giving a press conference. The main theme has been how the killer was able to drive his car past a security perimeter.

A police official said that the killer exploited the fact that gaps had been left in the perimeter to allow for ambulances to get in and out.

City officials have said that gaps between bollards were there as an escape route for emergency services but that they were guarded by the police.

“I think our security concept is good because it was coordinated,” said Ronni Krug, a spokesperson for the city hall.

“The case we are now discussing here is one that we could not have anticipated in terms of its dimensions and that perhaps could not have been prevented.”

Questions had been raised after the attack about why there were such big gaps between bollards at entrances to the Christmas market.

That the gaps "were guarded by police" presumably means that one or two officers stood next to them and maybe waived high visibility 'stop' signs. Evidently it does not mean that the gaps were covered by active anti-ram barriers that police could lower in the event that an emergency vehicle needed access but which would otherwise remain up. 

I find it appalling that city hall spokesman Ronni Krug would say that yesterday's attack could not have been anticipated or prevented. All European nations have security and anti-terrorism professionals who could have seen that perimeter vulnerability and would indeed have anticipated that attack. After all, the attacker saw and did just that.  

Not to be too hard on spokesman Krug, but he exemplifies the naïve mindset of the instinctively law-abiding citizen and Bürgermeister. The mindset of yesterday's attacker will perpetually be a mystery to them. 

That's a problem because someone who does not share at least some of the mindset of his adversaries is simply out of place doing vulnerability assessments. Yesterday's attacker could have told spokesman Krug and the rest of the crowd at city hall that their security concept was really no good at all if they wanted to stop vehicle ramming attacks. 

City hall - and not just the one in Magdeburg - is paying the price for not employing someone who will look at potential targets from their would-be attacker's point of view.