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CRIME

Mid-sized towns hit worst by bike crime

Nearly 180,000 bikes were stolen across Germany in 2010, estimated at a value of €120 million. According to a new study, more than over 90 percent of bicycle thefts go unsolved.

Published: 22 November 2011 08:00 CET
Mid-sized towns hit worst by bike crime
Photo: DPA

But it wasn’t Germany’s sprawling metropolises that recorded the highest rate of bike theft, but its middle-sized cities, the study for online personal finance forum Geld.de found. Münster in North Rhine-Westphalia had the unhappy position of being in top spot, while Oldenburg, Celle, Frankfurt an der Oder and Dessau-Roßlau followed close behind.

Out of the 127 towns and cities surveyed in Germany, Münster was 257 percent of the national average, with 1,828 bikes stolen per 100,000 inhabitants. This was three times as many thefts as in Berlin.

Geld.de described over 30 percent of German cities as “unsafe” for those wishing to keep hold of their bicycle.

Down the road from Münster, Remscheid was found to be the town with the lowest rate of bike theft, with only 36 thefts per 100,000 inhabitants reported in 2010. Of the bigger cities, Stuttgart was found to be one of the safest, with just 139 per 100,000 reported.

Regarding the prevalence of unsolved bike crime, Düsseldorf police spokesman Andreas Schogalla said, “In such incidents there are rarely any clues to lead us to the culprit. The lock is broken and the bike is simply gone.”

The survey also found that there was no strong correlation between the average income of a town’s inhabitants or geographical location and the rate of bicycle theft. It is, according to Schogalla, more down to “the carelessness of bike owners.”

“So many locks are inadequate, and some cyclists even forget to lock up their bike at all,” he said, pointing out that most bike locks can be cracked in seconds by lock cutters, which can be easily concealed by thieves in a backpack or under a jacket.

2010’s results were not all negative, however, as the number of bike thefts nationwide has dropped 11.2 percent since 2009.

Top five towns and cities with the highest theft rate, per 100,000 inhabitants

Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia – 1,828

Oldenburg, Lower Saxony – 1,521

Celle, Lower Saxony – 1,361

Frankfurt Oder, Brandenburg, – 1,341

Dessau-Roßlau, Saxony Anhalt – 1,268

Top five towns with the lowest theft rate, per 100,000 inhabitants

Remsheid, North Rhine-Westphalia – 36

Neunkirchen, Saarland – 50

Balingen, Baden-Württemberg – 59

Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, – 59

Suhl, Thuringia – 61

The Local/jcw

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CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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