German court OKs police cadet's expulsion over Nazi concerns

BERLIN (AP) — An German appeals court has upheld the decision of the state of Brandenburg to expel a police academy cadet for using Nazi-related terminology during a class exercise on using the phonetic alphabet during radio calls, authorities said Wednesday.

According to the Berlin-Brandenburg Administrative Court, the cadet phonetically spelled the last name Jung with the German words “Jude,” “untermensch,” Nazi and “gaskammer” or “genozid”: Jew, subhuman, Nazi and gas chamber or genocide.

He was expelled from the academy after the April 2019 incident due to “doubts about his loyalty to the constitution and character,” the court said. The cadet was not named publicly in line with German privacy laws.

In its Nov. 5 decision, the court said the police department in the state that surrounds Berlin was justified in throwing the cadet out of the academy. It said there was other evidence in addition to “the serious misconduct during the radio traffic exercise.”