A park in Berlin has designated areas for drug dealers to do business.
The manager of Görlitzer Park in the Kreuzburg area of Berlin spray painted pink poxes on the ground to indicate areas where dealers will be allowed to operate, according to the Guardian.
Police have repeatedly made failed attempts to push the drug sellers out of the park, and implemented a zero tolerance policy for drug dealers, but it hasn’t worked. So the park manager took matters into his own hands, with the hopes of keeping dealers that might intimidate visitors away from the park entrance.
“This method has purely practical reasoning behind it,” Cengiz Demirci told local radio station RBB, according to the Guardian. “It’s not that we’re legalizing the selling of drugs.” Demirci said that many of the drug dealers are migrants who cannot work, and suggested that the problem might be solved if the government gave them work permits instead, according to the Guardian.
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Police criticized the move.
“What is needed to ensure that the park is drug and crime free, is a constant police presence and judicial resolve,” Benjamin Jendro, a representative of the police trade union GdP, told Bild.
According according to the Guardian drug dealers were not abiding by the new rules on Thursday.
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Write to Amy Gunia at amy.gunia@time.com