Cops and robbers? A history of investigative techniques

No Trace Project > Resources > Cops and robbers? A history of investigative techniques

Imprisoned for publishing an anarchist newspaper

In what follows, we're going to tell you about the miserable endeavor that kept the Munich State Protection busy for two years: how the hell they managed to steal the blood of anarchist N. for a DNA sample. The Bavarian cops spared no expense or effort to carry out this operation, and some of the methods they employed may well be of interest to you. At the end of the text, you'll also find a list of other investigative measures used by the Munich police during this investigation.

Recently, on February 26, 2025, anarchist comrades N. and M. were arrested. The initial arrest warrant was issued with the charge of criminal conspiracy, for publishing (together with another person) the anarchist periodical Zündlumpen.

More details on these charges can be found here.

What is policing?

One could say that the police are nothing more than a permanent military occupying force on a particular territory, attempting to project its power across space (and time) by means of technological tools. Our dear detectives Obermaiers, Findeisens, Unglaubs, and Rinds understood this perfectly, participating in a reading group called “EG Schrift” [“Special Writing Investigation Group”], which was certainly informative for them. But nobody understands this better, to the point of having managed to fool entire squads of cops for years, than the famous Bavarian “folk heroes”. All of them thieves and poachers, like the Bavarian Hiasl or the brigand Kneißl, and not forgetting all the peasant deserters during the first revolutionary uprisings against the (Bavarian) authorities. However, it's not just these famous figures from a long-forgotten era, but also countless present-day individuals who still manage to escape the clutches of the henchmen of the (renewed) Bavarian dynasty, exposing them more or less mercilessly to public ridicule.

Because we believe that it is worth remembering the more modest, daily moments of this eternally antagonistic confrontation between authority and rebellious individuals, we're going to reconstruct such a moment here, from the police files of the so-called “Zündlumpen” proceedings, for all those who, like us, like to see the cops foiled, even if in the end the scales seem to have tipped in favor of State power.

Cops and robbers?

The year is 2022, in and around Munich. On a gray spring morning, the cops storm four anarchist apartments and three cellars, plus a print shop and the Frevel anarchist library. They are looking for three people and all kinds of reading material. The charge is that of a criminal organization, since the editors of the anarchist periodical Zündlumpen, according to the Bavarian public prosecutor's office, fall into this category. They arrested two of the wanted persons and will have to hunt down the third for almost two years. For it's blood they want, these State stooges, at least in the form of DNA. Of course, one cannot willingly accept such an attack. So the fact that the wanted person, let's call her N., did not respond to an invitation for a “non-bureaucratic” DNA sample, probably came as no surprise to the bloodhounds of the anti-terrorist prosecutor's office. What may seem more surprising is the attempt to avert the DNA collection by legal means, but it's always worth a try!

Another surprise: the cops apparently waited to see the outcome of this attempt, before launching the manhunt long-awaited by the leashed bloodhounds. First, they tried the cheapest method: sending colleagues from the nearest police station to pass by N.'s apartment once a night, but at irregular times. They were supposed to check N.'s presence via the presence of her car. This was unsuccessful, as the car was not parked in front of the apartment. The patrols, however, did not go unnoticed. Not surprising, since they are patrols.

Next attempt: the State Protection (Staatsschutz) agents simply ring the doorbell. No one opens the door. They'd like to break in, but they're out of practice. Instead — and this only makes sense in a cop's brain — they search the neighbor's place! N. isn't there. So they come back, this time with the landlord in tow. He opens the door for them, but N. isn't there. However, they keep in touch with the cooperative landlord, who dutifully and regularly reports N.'s (observed) hours of presence to the cops, and also collects information himself from neighbors, then passes it on to the police. But that didn't work out either.

The cops suspect that N. must have other places to stay, and since, as part of their investigation to date, they have already analyzed her bank account transactions and transfers over the last 8 years (!), they also ask all possible mail-order companies whether they might know of any new shipping addresses for N. As a matter of routine, companies such as PayPal, Ebay and others are also asked whether N. has an account with them, and if so, what addresses are on file. Deutsche Bahn [national railway company of Germany] and FlixBus are also asked to provide information on N.'s travel habits and, of course, a Schengen-wide search warrant had already been issued for N. and her alleged partner (whom the cops are officially looking for because of an unpaid fine of 10 euros and for not having carried out the alternative sentence to this unpaid fine).

Some particularly resourceful cop also had the idea of asking for lists of participants in courses at N.'s former vocational school, presumably to check for possible contacts; a request they took the precaution of emphasizing with a search warrant and a letter from the anti-terrorism prosecutor (“Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism,” the letterhead reads, in a blatant and apparently deliberately intimidating manner).

But all this failed to shed the necessary light.

Next attempt: monitoring of debit card use at ATMs, etc. Telecommunications monitoring already in progress at the time was unsuccessful, as the cell phone being monitored was not being used. By monitoring her bank card, however, they hoped that N.'s regular cash withdrawals (noted on the account statements) could be successfully exploited. A letter was therefore sent to the bank, with the discreet heading “Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism.” It stipulates that the police must be alerted every time N.'s bank card is used, and in real time. It would also be helpful if the bank restricted online transactions, and only closed N.'s account once the investigation was successful, the cops added jovially.

The investigators then tried to establish cash withdrawal patterns in order to intercept N., but to no avail. The patrols sent out to the bank branches were apparently always too slow, and never succeeded in catching N.

The investigators therefore wrote to the bank again, this time asking if it was possible to reduce the daily withdrawal limit, in the hope of forcing N. to go to the counter and thus gain more time on their side to attempt an arrest in the bank branch. The bank cooperated, but N. sensed the trap and raised the withdrawal limit again — via the online banking interface. Because it worked, her suspicions were dispelled. But that didn't help the cops.

In the meantime, they were also cutting her off her income. N. receives regular social welfare payments from the State, known as “Bürgergeld.” So the bloodhounds went to the employment office and made sure that N.'s benefits were not renewed. Using a pretext, of course, as they cheerfully note in the file. But it would also mean — one wonders if these smart guys took this into account — that there would be one less reason for N. to go to the bank, since there was nothing left to withdraw from her account.

It was then time for the cops to make their next move: monitoring the telecommunications of N.'s parents. In a world as technologically saturated as ours, this is a powerful way of infiltrating relationships between people. These days, what two people talk about can easily be eavesdropped on by professional voyeurs and State-sponsored informers. And even if we avoid these technological means of communication ourselves, we can rarely be sure that all our contacts will avoid talking about us in these mediated relationships, and won't reveal the most intimate details of our lives.

However, the bloodhounds freed from their leashes will still encounter difficulties: because N.'s mother's cell phone number was registered with the name spelled backwards — or was it simply a comma? — another technical gadget had to be used to determine her number: the IMSI-Catcher. Once at N.'s mother's home, and a second time at her workplace. And lo and behold: the cross-referencing of these two missions has made it possible to set up monitoring of the number. A simple glance in the phone book might have sufficed.

From then on, the police listen in on conversations between N.'s mother and all her contacts. On one occasion, they extracted from a conversation between her and a friend the information that N. often spent the night in the forest. N. was also scheduled to visit her parents at Christmas. So, once again, the police will be working overtime during the holidays.

A team from the MEK [Mobiles Einsatzkommando, special forces of the German police] was then stationed outside N.'s parents' apartment, and would observe her as she left for a new temporary place of residence. What can I say, the cops get the point on this one. They're feeling strong. Surveillance follows on days three, four, five, six and so on. No intervention, however. But on the fifteenth day, N. eluded the observers and was nowhere to be found. What bad luck! Or was the gamble too big for them?

But the police deliberately rely on coincidences, which they try to systematize through routine, constant patrols and so on. For it is well known, at least in the leadership ranks of this association, that the bureaucratic daily routine of civil servants, but above all the one-dimensionality of thought demanded at the time of hiring, obliterates all personal brilliance and investigative genius, and that without this institutionalized multiplication of coincidences, there would be little more than a handful of police successes to report. And so, in February 2024, one such chance occurred in this story: a State Protection officer — where did he come from? — recognized N. in the street and sent a patrol to check her out. An escape attempt follows, which unfortunately fails. And so, after two years, the hunters obtained their blood — or rather, in this case, a slightly more vulgar bodily fluid: saliva.

How to get hold of the scribes?

Here are some of the other leads followed by investigators after the 2022 raids as part of the proceedings against the Zündlumpen newspaper:

• Private letters found in the raid were analyzed by experts and compared with Zündlumpen's writing style.
• Recovered copies of Zündlumpen issues were analyzed to determine their printing method.
• Landlords, residents, and workers were interviewed to find out who was using which premises and how, and whether anything had been noticed (while at the same time suggesting that they kick out any undesirable anarchists?).
• Bank statements going back as far as eight years were analyzed to see if any printing materials or even possibly anarchist literature had been purchased. Or if anything out of the ordinary had happened with the account…
• Former employers were contacted to obtain, if possible, samples of texts for comparison.
• Attempts were made to censor issues of Zündlumpen from archive.org (!) and to request information from the website (without success).
• Development of a characterization of the defendants, entitled “Ideological thinking and anarchist life.”
• Collection of DNA traces and fingerprints from items such as zines/books, doors, cups, printing machines and much more…
• Handwriting analysis to compare private texts with pseudonymized letters.
• Text and image comparisons between texts and images found during the raid and texts and images published in the Zündlumpen newspaper.
• Content analysis to determine whether private texts coincide with the content of texts published in the Zündlumpen newspaper and could provide indications of authorship.
• General analyses of the content and “ideology” of the texts, newspapers, zines, etc. found (in total, hundreds of zines and newspapers were seized).
• Metadata analyses of recovered images.
• Wherever possible, an “ancillary procedure” is initiated for so-called “chance finds”.

Update and solidarity

For nearly a month, anarchists N. and M. have been incarcerated, charged with criminal conspiracy (with one other person) for creating the anarchist newspaper Zündlumpen. N. is incarcerated in the Aichach women's prison (near Augsburg), M. is still incarcerated in Stadelheim. N. has still not been allowed to wear private clothes and must continue to wear the prison uniform, while M. can already wear private clothes in the men's prison at Stadelheim. The transfer of N. to a provincial prison [Aichach is 70 kilometers from Munich] is a further repressive measure, as she is now even more remote and isolated, and visits from her relatives are all the more complicated.

A review of M.'s imprisonment has just taken place, during which his pre-trial detention was unfortunately extended. The review of N.'s detention will follow shortly.

So far, we have little news or information on the conditions of N. and M.'s detention, as the restrictions in Bavarian prisons are particularly repressive.

This makes it all the more important for you to show your solidarity!

If you'd like to write letters, write to solidaritaet-mit-n-und-m [at] riseup.net and we'll let you know their address.