Police officers guard members of one of the groups involved in a brawl in the city centre.
© dpa
On Saturday, the Berlin administration for the interior published the situation report on clan crime 2022. According to this, investigators registered 872 offences in connection with multiple organised crime last year. That is 23 cases more than in 2021.
The list is long and multi-faceted. Fraud (125), traffic offences (122) and brutality offences (120) lead it, followed by drug offences (86), theft/robbery (65), threats also with weapons (56), robbery (43) and money laundering (42). Among the registered cases are three homicides. In addition, there are 89 administrative offences such as speeding or violations of the Weapons Act.
Berlin is considered a hotspot for clan crime nationwide. In the previous year, 303 suspects were identified for the offences mentioned (2021: 295). In total, Berlin's interior administration attributes 582 people to the clan crime milieu (as of the end of 2022). Just under half - 47.7 per cent - are German citizens. About a quarter are listed in the statistics as Lebanese (14.95 per cent) or German-Lebanese (8.9 per cent). The citizenship of 18.7 per cent is unclear. In addition, the investigators also classify Turkish (4.8 per cent) or German-Turkish citizens (1.7 per cent) or Syrians (2.1 per cent) as clan criminals, but also some Swedes, for example.
Clan crimes accounted for about 0.2 per cent of total crime in Berlin in 2022, and this also applies to the number of suspects. Nevertheless, the authorities have been taking stronger and coordinated action against these groups for years. One trigger may have been the spectacular robbery of a 100-kilogram gold coin from the Bode Museum in 2017.
An important point of an action plan presented in 2018 is the seizure of assets suspected of originating from criminal offences. In this context, according to the situation report 2022, there were 160 police checks in Berlin - that is, almost every second day on average. During these operations, some of which were carried out jointly with public order offices, districts, customs and tax authorities, 606 objects were checked and 36 of them were closed. The evidence seized included more than 52,000 euros in suspected drug money, 11,203 untaxed cigarettes, about 209 kilogrammes of water pipe tobacco and 633 sales units of narcotics. In addition, 34 cars, 82 gambling machines and 47 weapons or dangerous objects were seized.