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CRIME

Germany’s safest and most dangerous cities

Crime statistics published on Wednesday revealed Germany's most dangerous and safest cities. They also showed a sharp rise in child pornography and burglary offences.

Published: 4 June 2014 11:39 CEST
Germany's safest and most dangerous cities
Photo: DPA

The 2013 national crime figures, which were leaked to Welt newspaper earlier this week, show just under six million crimes were recorded in Germany last year.

When broken down to the number of crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, Frankfurt am Main rates as the most dangerous city in Germany with 16,292 crimes per 100,000 people. Its high ranking was put down to its red light district and the large airport.

Cologne was second in the list followed by Berlin and Düsseldorf.

In Bavaria there were just 5,073 crimes per 10,000 inhabitants, almost 40 percent less than in North Rhine-Westphalia. Baden-Württemberg was the second safest state with 5,450 crimes.

And Munich ranked as the safest large city in Germany. It had half the crime rate of other German cities with 7,400 offences per 100,000 inhabitants.

The crime figures, presented by interior minister Thomas de Mazière on Wednesday, also revealed burglaries had reached their highest level for 15 years with 150,000 domestic break-ins recorded, a rise of 3.7 percent on 2012.

Oliver Malchow, head of police union the GdP, called for more officers to be recruited to tackle the increase. “We have too few people, with too little time to work intensively on burglaries,” he said.

The figures also showed a 28 percent rise in child pornography offences with 4,144 recorded incidents.

Crime fell overall by 0.6 percent, while the number of non-German suspects rose by seven percent.

SEE ALSO: Officer puts neo-Nazi stickers in police van

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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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