Ahen the Frankfurt police cordoned off the station district in mid-August to check who was in the “scene”, that was only a first step. It won’t be the last raid. The police already have a clear picture of crime in the station district. However, the authority has long pointed out that the problems in the district cannot be solved by the police alone. It is said that the city has to “go along with it”, especially when it comes to open consumption and an increasingly growing scene. Both can only be solved in the long term by realigning the city’s drug policy.
One consequence of Frankfurt’s drug policy, which, as it now turns out, has ignored the abuses for far too long, is reflected in the numbers that the police are currently recording for their current statistics. Accordingly, the offenses related to the drug scene will probably reach a new high this year – especially as far as violent crime is concerned.
Almost 8,000 crimes recorded in the station district
For the year 2021, 7925 criminal offenses were recorded in the station area. Among them are 2697 violations of the Narcotics Act. For the year 2022, one expects “a similar overall level as in the previous year”, according to a spokesman for the police headquarters. “However, there are already signs of increases in street crime, especially street robbery.”
The police are now recording very precisely whether users of hard drugs are among the suspects who are being investigated in connection with crimes in the station district. This is also in order to read a tendency for drug-related crime, which according to the authorities has not been recorded separately so far.
According to the authorities, 5,001 of the 7,925 crimes that were registered in the station area last year were solved. Among them were 1978 users of hard drugs, as the authority announced. The majority (1169 people) were found to have violated the Narcotics Act, usually through dealing in narcotics – with the recorded cases of crack trafficking at 442 offenses being almost twice as high as the offenses involving heroin.
In addition to these violations, hard drug users have committed other crimes. According to a spokesman, 312 cases of theft, 145 bodily harm, 78 property and counterfeiting offenses and 67 robbery offenses were recorded.
Police have an eye on drug-related crime
Among the theft offenses, bicycle theft in particular was assigned to the procurement crime. According to the police crime statistics, “the proportion of suspects from the milieu of users of hard drugs has increased”. Possibly the theft of bicycles “came more into the focus of indirect drug-related crime”.
There has also been an increase in theft from vehicles. “The increased proportion of hard drug suspects suggests that vehicle break-ins may have served as an evasive offense for perpetrators otherwise engaged in shoplifting or office theft due to store closures or restricted access .”
Police chief Stefan Müller now wants to “modify” the operational concept in the station area “to counteract this development”. Among other things, the police want to be even more present in the district “to reduce crime and increase the feeling of security among the citizens,” it said.
