Operation Red Card was the codename given to the Berlin Police's investigation into the murder of star footballer Orkan Erdem in 2018.
Orkan Erdem, the ethnically-Turkish captain of Germany's national football team, was bribed by the Arab crime boss Kareem Tarik-Amir into forcing the 2018 World Cup qualifier match with Turkey into penalty kicks, during which he would purposefully miss his kick and hand the game to Turkey. The night before the qualifiers, Erdem was summoned to meet with Karim, and, while walking his dog through the Marzahn neighborhood along the way, he was attacked by the pensioner Albert Meiser for allowing his dog to defecate on Meiser's front garden. Meiser picked up his anti-littering sign post and swung it at Erdem as Erdem raised his hands, severing his finger, thus forcing Meiser to finish the job by bludgeoning Erdem to death. Meiser then threw his sign post into the trunk of Erdem's golden Lamborghini and drove it a few hundred meters into his garage, thus removing any evidence of his involvement in Erdem's murder, and fulfilling what he saw as his duty as a sort of "neighborhood watch".
At the time of Erdem's death, tensions were running high between the ethnic German and Turkish communities of Berlin due to the Middle Eastern and African migration crisis of the 2010s, and Turkish nationalists were infuriated that Erdem chose to play for Germany rather than for the Turkish national team. Homicide detective Kurt Grimmer, who was visiting his mistress Sabine Ludar in Marzahn, became aware of the murder upon witnessing police activity near Ludar's house, and he arrived at the scene and, upon discovering that the body was that of Erdem, he ordered the police officers Hauke Wachtmeister and Alina Petrović to conceal the identity of the victim until he could return. Grimmer, who was indebted to the Kovac clan, took out loans from his brother Ulf Grimmer of the neo-Nazi Marzahn Brotherhood and from Ludar before having Ludar place a bet on Turkey winning the match, and he also arranged for his supervisor Gert Seiler to give him control over the case. With the case under his control, Grimmer persuaded the Berlin Police to keep the victim's identity under wraps, lest it provoke ethnic violence and a media circus.
With the backing of his supervisor Seiler, Grimmer formed a task force consisting of himself as its leader, Bruno Przybylla as the expert on football hooliganism and gangs, Hans Kuscha as his deputy, Lars Niedermann as the head of forensics, and Tom Kriftel as the computer expert. He also brought Wachtmeister and Petrovic onto the task force as liaisons from the Marzahn police force, and Petrovic suggested the task force name "Red Card" as a soccer reference. Berlin police chief Claudia Bandlow had Seiler find a presentable Turkish policeman to serve as the public face of the investigation, both to assuage fears of Muslim unrest on the murder's revelation, and to ensure that Grimmer - who had a neo-Nazi background - would be able to conduct his investigation in private and away from questions of xenophobia or impropriety. That night, Grimmer visited the locker room at the Berlin stadium to privately inform Erdem's teammates of his death and instruct them to maintain silence until the investigation was complete, doing so in order to further prevent a media circus, and privately to demoralize the team so that his bet on Turkey's win would be more likely. Ultimately, Turkey won the game after German footballer Raphael Bou'Penga missed a penalty shot.
Both the investigation and Grimmer's fortunes took a sour turn when the bookkeeper Sascha Fruehm was murdered by the North African Tarik-Amir clan, as Kareem Tarik-Amir believed that Grimmer's large bet on Turkey winning the game meant that Fruehm had revealed Tarik-Amir's fixing of the match to Grimmer. Grimmer decided to use this opportunity to investigate the Kovac clan now that their bookkeeper had been murdered. Grimmer added the case of the bookkeeper's murder to his task force, bringing his rival Robert Fucht and his partner Gesine Kramer into the task force, but putting them in a remote corner of the room; he also disposed of his betting slip at the scene of Fruehm's murder, but as unable to locate Ludar's.
Separately, Turkish policeman Erol Birkan witnessed Kareem Tarik-Amir conclude a partnership with Tomo Kovac, and this led to him accepting Seiler's request to serve as the Turkish policeman on the Red Card task force, so that he could combine his crusade against the Tarik-Amir clan with an opportunity for promotion (and redemption for a failed raid on the Tarik-Amir clan a few nights earlier). Grimmer was wary of working with a gay Turkish policeman due to his homophobia, xenophobia, and the secretive nature of his investigation, and he had Birkan's informant Murad Issam falsely implicate the Kovac clan in the murder of the bookkeeper, resulting in a raid on Kovac's betting houses and enabling Grimmer to pocket money from the raid and pay off Kovac.
At the same time, German Soccer Association president Walther Laubach bribed Grimmer to drop any investigation into match-fixing on the part of the association, causing Grimmer to declare that the Kovac clan was not involved in the murder. At the same time, news broke of Erdem's death, resulting in a breakdown in relations between Kovac and Kareem Tarik-Amir, and resulting in a war between their clans. A Tarik-Amir drive-by on one of Kovac's betting houses resulted in the death of a six-year-old girl, Aylin Peters, and Birkan - who had grown up with Tarik-Amir - attempted to confront his old enemy in the "no-go zone" of Berlin, only for his mentor Canberk Karaca to talk him out of it. Birkan was spotted by Kareem while talking with his former girlfriend Kamila, now Hakim Tarik-Amir's fiancee, and he was kidnapped and brought to Hakim, who berated him for entering the "no-go zone"; in retaliation, Hakim had Canberk kidnapped and tortured to death. At the same time, Grimmer was forced to attend a meeting of the neo-Nazi Marzahn Brotherhood to be punished for not repaying his debts, as his brother Ulf risked castration if Kurt did not receive his punishment. Birkan followed Kurt to the meeting, which was promptly broken up by police, and this event resulted in further media scrutiny towards Grimmer's past, particularly due to Karsten Nguyen's reporting on the exaggerated alt-right threat in Berlin.
At Erdem's funeral, the Tarik-Amir clan, the Kovac clan, and the Muslim biker gang, the Death Daggers (engaged in protection racketeering), were in attendance, and a fight nearly broke out between Kovac and the Tarik-Amirs. Upon overhearing Erdem's brother Pusat Erdem talking with his father about his dismay at the police's theory that his brother was involved with crime, Death Daggers leader Ugur Kubilay offered the services of his gang in punishing the neo-Nazis of Marzahn for their alleged role in his brother's murder, and Pusat acquiesced, intent on delivering justice with or without the police's help. At the same time, the task force decided to include Canberk's murder in the Red Card investigation, and Grimmer again had Murad incriminate Kovac in order to justify another raid. The Kovac clan's members were arrested and questioned, allowing for Kareem Tarik-Amir to buy out its betting shops and leave Kovac with nothing to return to on his release from police custody; Kovac promptly fled town. That night, a huge, 200-person brawl broke out between the Death Daggers and the Marzahn Brotherhood, during which the latter's leader Johann Henkenmaier was mortally wounded.
Not long after, Grimmer discovered the location of Erdem's Lamborghini and realized that Meiser was responsible for the murder, as the Lamborghini was in his garage. Meiser revealed his motives for the murder, but Meiser decided to temporarily detain Meiser rather than send him to jail; he did not see Meiser as a threat to the public safety, and he wished to use Red Card's resources to destroy Berlin's major gangs rather than arrest Meiser and close the case. Birkan followed Grimmer to Meiser's apartment after recognizing Hans Kuscha's cough as that of one of several masked men who, days earlier, had beaten him and told him to stay away from the Erdem case, and he was there detained by Grimmer, who realized that Birkan was uncovering his corruption. Grimmer persuaded Birkan of the merits of temporarily covering up Meiser's role in the murder, using Red Card's resources to defeat the gangs, and later revealing Meiser's role in the murder, so that justice was delivered and the two men would have their vengeance on the gangs. Birkan was initially reluctant to do so, and intended to report Grimmer, but, on being ambushed by a Tarik-Amir hit squad while visiting Murad Issam's apartment (as part of a trap set up by Murad's friend Raif Tarik-Amir), Birkan decided to work with Grimmer.
Birkan and Grimmer informed the Red Card task force that the Tarik-Amir clan was chiefly suspected of murdering Erdem, but, by then, both the media and the police command had grown impatient with the task force's failure to find Erdem's Lamborghini, the murder weapon, or any meaningful leads. Grimmer was summoned to meet Kareem at an abandoned warehouse, where the ambitious Karim threatened to reveal Ludar's gambling receipt unless Grimmer helped him raid his brother's wedding party in the "no-go zone" to help him rise to lead the Tarik-Amir clan. After Kareem left the warehouse, Grimmer retrieved a discarded baseball bat that Kareem had been using, and had Birkan bring the Lamborghini to the warehouse. There, he discarded Meiser's sign post and planted the baseball bat in the car's trunk, before switching out his SIM card, calling the police under a fake and anonymous voice, and reporting an abandoned Lamborghini near an abandoned warehouse. The two men then returned to Seiler and informed him that the Lamborghini was found and that a baseball bat was being tested for fingerprints, and, when it was determined that they were a match for Tarik-Amir, Grimmer persuaded his boss to authorize a massive police operation to arrest the Tarik-Amir leaders.
In the ensuing operation, helicopters, armored vehicles, and several SWAT and policemen raided the Kreuzberg slum. Hakim Tarik-Amir ordered the local masked criminals to set up barricades and set them alight, but they were breached by the armored vehicles before they could be set on fire. A riot soon broke out as local youths attacked the police cars, and Hakim and his men armed themselves and opened fire on the police. Contrary to their agreement, Grimmer arrested Kareem as well as several other Tarik-Amir criminals, and policeman Aykut Kubat - whom Birkan had inaccurately suspected of being a mole for the Tarik-Amir clan - was shot in the neck and killed during the raid. Ultimately, at least 35 people (including 8 officers) were injured, while 37 suspects were taken into police custody. The police collected evidence - including vast stashes of drugs and weapons, shutting down the Tarik-Amir clan. Nguyen then published an article called "The Neo-Nazi and Homo-Turk", detailing the collaboration of the two unlikely partners in the operation.
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