The police tries to enforce the rules because the protesters (our local contrarians) quite often violate the rules regarding distancing, masking or contact limitations intentionally.

Unfortunately this creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy because these folks view themselves as persecuted victims in some sort of covert world war. (Last year, a woman from Kassel even compared herself to resistance fighter Sophie Scholl who was executed by the Nazis [0][1])

The whole contrarian scene here is somewhere between crazy and ruthless by now. Earlier in the pandemic there were parents who took their children to protests to make the police refrain from using water cannons on them [2]. Recently a man from that scene killed his wife and their three daughters because they were caught buying a faked vaccination passport for his wife and were afraid what might happen to them [3]. In another incident, a man shot a student gas station employee after the worker asked him to wear a mask [4]. They're completely out of their minds by now.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y7pNU03i-o

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl (because you might not be familiar with that name if you aren't from Germany)

[2] https://www.fr.de/politik/corona-demonstration-berlin-infekt...

[3] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/panorama/tote-koenigs-wusterh...

[4] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/idar-oberstein-tankstel...