Newly released figures from the Zurich cantonal police show how the 2010 crime rate in Switzerland’s financial hub has fallen to its lowest level in a decade.
According to Zurich cantonal police, a total of 126,712 crimes were reported in 2010, down 7.4 percent on the previous year. The ten-year high was registered in 2004, with 167,019 cases, police said.
One kind of crime bucking the downward trend is cyber crime, which authorities say represents a big challenge for the future.
In the fight against crimes carried out on the Internet, in 2003 one Terabyte (TB) of data was secured by police, 9 TB in 2007, 48 TB in 2008 and 100 TB in 2009, Swiss daily NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) reported.
If the sensitive data was to be printed out on A4 paper, it would form a paper tower as high as 3,500 kilometers, the paper said.