whether such conduct on the part of the officers should be considered a considerable violation of dignity and as a disciplinary offence, the questioning of the reporting party had provided major indications of such a suspicion and hence an investigation under disciplinary law was necessary. The Authority for the Interior and Sport invoked section 15 of the Hamburg Act to Protect the Public Safety and Order (Hamburgisches Gesetz zum Schutz der öffentlichen Sicherheit und Ordnung) and the discontinuation order of the public prosecution office as to the powers of the officers to search an individual. It went on to state that the evaluation under service law after discontinuation of the criminal proceedings had not provided any indication of misconduct under service law that required investigation. No order had been given to the reporting party to walk up and down in the “waddling gait”. In the course of the correspondence, the Authority for the Interior and Sport however stated that the statement of the officers deployed, which contradicted the report to which it had referred, had only been made in informal questioning by the responsible local head of the facility. The Joint Commission indicated that the procedure that had been selected was inadequate in view of the gravity of the accusation. The very selection of the procedure should have made it clear that the procedure alleged by the reporting party would be undignified and unlawful. The disciplinary superior should therefore not have restricted his investigations to the “informative questioning” of the officers deployed by the local head of the facility and to a presumption arrived at on this basis alone that the reporting party could not be believed. It is indispensable when such accusations are made to at least obtain a written, that is a binding, verifiable declaration on the part of the officers concerned. This serves not only to investigate the accusations, but particularly to also maintain the reputation of the police and of the officers concerned. The Joint Commission requested this to be taken into account in future sets of proceedings. The Hamburg Interior Authority concurred with the Joint Commission that such a procedure would have been expedient and suitable with hindsight where appropriate to make an additional contribution towards clarifying the facts. For this reason, it had been agreed for the police that binding declarations on the part of the officers would be obtained in comparable cases in future. 87