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CRIME

Pick-pocketing on the rise on Berlin trains

More passengers are falling victim to crime on Berlin’s public transport. The number of pick-pocketing cases has increased by 20 percent in a year, the police said on Monday.

Published: 21 October 2013 10:11 CEST
Pick-pocketing on the rise on Berlin trains
Photo: DPA

Berlin police said crime increased by 11.5 percent in the last year with the number of people being pick-pocketed going up from 4,910 to 5,850.

And crime on the city’s U-Bahn and trains rockets on weekend nights, the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper reported.

Police spokesman Meik Gauer said the thieves targeted a certain type of victim.

“Most of these incidents take place at the weekend when people are drunk at night after visiting clubs and get the train and are helpless because of the alcohol,” he said.

Thieves often cut open passengers’ bags and pockets with razor blades or Stanley knives, he added.

Gauer said: “A lot of the time the victim is unconsciously helping the thief when, for example, they wear headphones. The criminal then just has to follow the cable to the iPhone.”

READ MORE: Berlin bids to put energy grid back in public hands

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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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