Bremen has a problem with public violence, and it just got worse. Two Turkish suspects are now on the run for five separate shooting attacks, which targeted the legs of each victim.
The small city-state — which holds the unwanted distinction of having the highest crime rate of any German federal state, recording nearly 15,000 offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024 according to Federal Criminal Police Office data — is now grappling with a wave of targeted shootings that have left one man dead and four others injured since the beginning of March.
Police have established a special commission called “Focus” to investigate what has become an alarming pattern: five separate shooting attacks in public spaces, all following the same method. In each case, the alleged perpetrators approached their victims on the street and deliberately shot them in the legs. One victim, a 32-year-old man, did not survive. The others ranged in age from 25 to 60.
Two suspects are now the subject of public arrest warrants: 35-year-old Osman Sönmez and 39-year-old Ferhat Kokakelci, both Turkish nationals. Police believe them to be responsible for the attacks across the Neustadt, Walle, and Obervieland districts — areas that already struggle with elevated rates of drug-related crime and street violence.
What is driving the shootings remains unclear. According to Apollo News, citing a police spokesman, investigators have not ruled out either a personal dispute or a connection to organized crime. Both possibilities are being actively pursued.
The case lands in a city that has long wrestled with serious crime challenges. Bremen’s case clearance rate sits at just 44.5 percent — one of the lowest in Germany — and the city leads the country in predatory crimes such as muggings, with 194 cases per 100,000 residents. Drug dealing, property crime, and violence in outlying districts such as Gröpelingen have been persistent concerns for local authorities for years.
Bremen’s crime wave is primarily driven by foreigners. In fact, an incredible 73 percent of all crime suspects are foreigners.
Bremen’s Senator for the Interior, Eva Högl of the SPD, attempted to project a tough-on-crime approach. She said she had made clear from the outset that such crimes would be “prosecuted with the full force of the law,” thanking both the public prosecutor’s office and the police for their cooperation. “We will not tolerate violence on the streets,” she said.
🇩🇪Not even 100-year-olds are safe from violent street robberies in Germany.
According to Bild, German police are searching for these two men after they conducted a "cowardly attack" against a 100-year-old victim on May 30, 2025, in Bremen.
They stole a Patek Philippe model… pic.twitter.com/jtYWxTL7ql
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 9, 2025Whether the arrests of the two named suspects will bring the shootings to an end — or whether they are part of a deeper conflict yet to surface — remains to be seen.
Bremen’s crime crisis tied to immigration
However, other SPD members have been more open about the root causes of the city’s crisis.
Bremen’s former Interior Senator Ulrich Mäurer of the SPD, who served until 2025, even stated that the city’s immigration policy has been a disaster and is contributing to housing and social problems, including an exploding crime rate.
The city is “completely overwhelmed with taking in so many people,” said Mäurer while speaking with German newspaper Weser-Kurier, adding that the problems have “worsened.”
Mäurer had been there since the start, helping guide the city’s radical policy towards immigration. The 73-year-old had been in office for 16 years. Only at the very end of his tenure did he blame “massive immigration” for the housing shortage and “enormous difficulties” in daycares, schools, and at job sites.
Bremen has been one of the most open cities to mass immigration over the last decade. In 2018, the city declared itself a “safe haven,” and that designation is still in place. The declaration signed at the time states: “We welcome refugees – and are ready to take more people.”
“If the problems are not solved,” said Mäurer, “it is no wonder that more and more people are turning away from our democratic community.”
Mäurer also spoke of a spiraling crime crisis in his liberal bastion of a city.
“We have seen a massive increase in robberies since the summer of 2023, which we can clearly attribute to migration,” said Mäurer: “The majority of these crimes are committed by young men from North Africa.”
In fact, the problem had grown so serious by the end of 2024 that Bremen’s police initiated a special force called “Young Robbers” to target these foreigners. The new force has opened 1,000 investigations and identified 350 suspects.
