According to the Tagesspiegel, Green parliamentarian Özcan Mutlu must appear in court to defend himself against charges that inappropriately addressed a policeman with the word, "you." German has a formal second person pronoun ("Sie," pronounced, roughly, ZEE), and an informal pronoun ("Du," pronounced, roughly, DOO). Mutlu used the wrong one. The context for his remarks isn't given.

The problem is that according to anecdotal evidence, members of the Berliner police force seem prone to addressing folks who look foreign with the term, "Du." It can be a blatant form of disrespect. But everything depends on context, as the article notes: if you don't speak German very well, or if you're trying to defuse a situation, the use of "Du" can be perfectly understandable.

Apparently, no official statistics are available on the number of "insulting address" cases like Mutlu's, and the prosecutor's office is not particularly aggressive about pursuing crimes of insult. I suppose that's a good thing. But the fact that the crime exists qua crime does give some cross-cultural insight into the tenacity of status regulations in German law.