Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 6:41 am Post subject: Strache claims public security 'about to collapse'
Strache claims public security 'about to collapse'
By Lisa Chapman
Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Heinz-Christian Strache has claimed public security is about to "collapse" after a report showing soaring burglary rates.
Speaking after the Interior Ministry said earlier this week break-ins had increased by 70 per cent last year in Vienna, Strache said today: "Austria and its capital Vienna are standing before a collapse of public security."
He called for 1,500 more policemen on the streets of Vienna and the setting up of a centre for worried residents as well as a 24-hour crime hotline in Vienna.
Strache also claimed there had been 19,000 more crimes in 2009 than in the previous year and that Vienna, with some 160,000 break-ins last year, had borne the brunt of the rise.
And he said foreigners had been responsible for most of the burglaries.
Strache, who will head his party’s list in this autumn’s city/provincial election in Vienna, said Social Democratic (SPÖ) Mayor Michael Häupl had been living "in a dream world" in regard to crime.
The FPÖ leader estimated that implementation of his party’s security suggestions in Vienna would cost 250 million Euros. "That is a lot of money, but its expenditure will make Vienna residents feel safer," he said.
The FPÖ has called on Fekter to resign following the release of the report this week.
FPÖ General Secretary and federal security spokesman Harald Vilimsky said Fekter should step down and claimed most break-ins had been the work of "eastern gangs" that could enter and leave Austria unhindered.
Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) security spokesman Peter Westenthaler also called for re-imposition of border controls, the abrogation of the Schengen Agreement and harsher punishments for criminals.
Strache is trying to win an election remember. He wants to prove that the SPÖ is doing a horrible job with security and that he would make it better. All a load of BS if you ask me.
Guys, are you living on this planet?! Long before any party announced this as a problem, it had been clear - back in 2007, 2008, and 2009 the break-ins into the apartments grew 40% annually. Do you know that Vienna has higher rates per capita than Paris?! And paris has not been considered very safe. I don't care about parties, but this is a really huge problem now and though I am a foreigner myself, the fact are the facts - it's mostly foreigners who now can easily cross the boarder and be abroad in 40 minutes. I personally know 5 people whose apartments were broken into. One was my former neighbour - right in front of my apartment and it happened between 13 and 15.00. You can dig out the stats on the net. I personally have a safe door, a safe inside, am insured - but am ready for break in any time.
I don;'t care who brings it up as a big issue - and kudos to him if he was the first to bring it up, if everyone else didn't. At least now someone will take care of this issue. I am not into Austrian politics (yet) so I have no opinion about any politicians, I am just really concerned about the safety issue here.
Silvia wrote:
Quote:
Guys, are you living on this planet?!
Yep!
Actually this has been in the news for years also, but he somehow he makes it sound like he discovered the problem all by himself, yesterday.
And it has probably been an increasing problem, since the cut the budget for Vienna few elections ago.
What they don’t seem to be reporting is about the increasing number of old people getting mugged in broad daylight.
I never said there wasn't a problem. I think the point that most of us are making is that 'collapse in public security' makes it sound as if Vienna is hurtling towards dystopia, which it clearly isn't.
Well, clearly?! Clearly for whom? It might actually. 8 years ago, driving was better - now there are many more crazy teenagers on old BMWs (I don't want to say anything about nationalities, but whoever is driving knows what I mean); if you take a tram, you would stumble upon loud rude crowds of youngsters who speak the languages I don't even know (once I was almost attacked); there many more beggars all over the place; more pick-pocketers and the same number of murders as in some of the most dangerous capitals in the world. and 70% growth in break-ins that we talked about. And should I remind you of Fritz, Kampusch and several notorious scandalous household killings.
I know this happens everywhere, but it's time to open the eyes - Vienna has changed.
I have been here now over 12 years and Vienna has changed, some are good changes and some are bad. One thing I do notice the same progression happens everywhere I have lived in the western world. When I moved here, a new Viennese friend told me the charm of the place was that it was running about 20 years behind many other major cities. Life was slower and more relaxed and it was a very safe city.
It caught up!
And here is my view into future. (Lets meet up in 20 years and see if I have any of Nostradamus's Genes)
Vienna has or will have soon the same problems many other places in the world have. To live here you will be either rich or poor, the middle class will head for the burbs. You will see more run down cars; you will see increased crime, street gangs, and all the other scenarios that go with this. It will become like places, in the UK, Germany, the US or wherever. Places, that also used to be peaceful and slow moving.
Strache and his bunch know the scenario, they are promising they can reverse the progression but the only thing is his orderly world will be more of a hell than the one we are afraid we are heading for.
Parsifal, I really could not care less of what you call my messages. However, just for the record, getting personal and callin my text a nonsense is a cheap shot, not pointing out FACTS. Please I am not interested in the opinion of someone who is clearly keeping his/her head in the sand and is in complete denial. Enjoy while it lasts
I have been here now over 12 years and Vienna has changed, some are good changes and some are bad. One thing I do notice the same progression happens everywhere I have lived in the western world. When I moved here, a new Viennese friend told me the charm of the place was that it was running about 20 years behind many other major cities. Life was slower and more relaxed and it was a very safe city.
Criminals at Large
Latest News Modern Times
Once one of the safest capitals in Europe, Vienna is reeling under a massive upsurge in crime; most Viennese blame immigration. Is this the case?
Eva Manasieva
Vera Mair
01/09/2009
Interior Minister Maria Fekter talks with two police officers about rising crime in Vienna - Photo: Jacqueline Kacetl
Less than 25 years ago you could leave your car unlocked overnight in Vienna and nothing would happen. The car would be right where you had left it, and whatever you had had inside would remain untouched. People say “Vienna is a village,” and in terms of personal safety and the security of property, it truly was.
Today’s statistics tell a very different story. The Austrian capital presently stands at the top of the chart in crimes committed nationwide – with the number of reported incidents increasing by 12.3% for the first half of 2009 alone over the same period last year. This is unprecedented, according to the Federal Crime Bureau.
The numbers tell the story: There have been 12,794 reported crimes in Vienna since the beginning of 2009, out of a total of 13,678 for the country as a whole.
Particularly startling is the number of break-ins – up 8.7% in apartments (6,563 cases) and up 39.8% in single-family houses (4,248 cases) for the whole country. And here again, the comparison to the rest of the country is startling, with Vienna at 14.1% and 64.7% respectively.
The numbers of thefts are also high. Most affected are the outlying district of Simmering (up 230.6%), the City Center (up 208.3%) – a preferred center for tourists – and the residential green 22nd district of Donaustadt (up 133.7%).
The number of resolved cases, on the other hand, is drastically low – only 5.8%.
The worst month in Vienna, with 24,210 criminal complaints, has been April. The “best”, January, with “only” 17,411.
The capital also tops the list of car thefts, which have ballooned to 71.6%, in only one year. The preferred crime locations are again the city center and the suburbs. The police seem to be powerless.
“Most of the car thefts are done by perfectly organized gangs; the stolen cars are being taken directly across the eastern border of the country,” says Christof Hetzmannseder, head of the Vienna Criminal Police. And once in Eastern Europe, the traces disappear.
But even without stolen goods crossing the border, the police have a hard time, with few of the cases of break-ins actually getting resolved.
Vienna politicians however have promised help.
“The City of Vienna is aware of the ballooning crime, and we will help the police in any way we can”, promised Vienna’s mayor Michael Häupl. The city already sponsored the police with €100,000, for new digital cameras, which the policemen urgently need in their daily work, emphasized Häupl.
Interior Minister Maria Fekter also took action against rising crime rates and initiated SOKO Ost – a special commission investigating burglaries in Austria’s eastern regions of Lower Austria, Burgenland and Vienna.
The SOKO Ost – 200 police officers recruited from other states (partly against their will) - aims at supporting local investigations to uncover the criminals’ networks. This temporary increase in personnel has become necessary due to a general staff deficit in Austria’s police force - which is “no secret“ the spokesman of the SOKO Ost, Michael Takacs told The Vienna Review.
“Starting to train new police officers now,” Takacs explains, “would not solve the current problem because it will take three years until the trainees will be fit for service.” The SOKO Ost operates from early July until the end of September – too short a time to accomplish such a big task, critics claim.
Whether the special commission’s work has been successful has not been made public yet. That the Ministry of the Interior holds back information on the outcome until the end of the special commission is, according to Takacs, not due to secrecy, but rather that it takes some time for the results to show in criminal statistics. They were “not bad”, he concludes and journalists who had previously announced that the SOKO Ost had failed, “will surely be surprised,” Takacs said with a certain satisfaction.
Just recently the Secretary for Interior announced a new SOKO, this time investigating motor-vehicle theft, another hot issue this year when in Vienna alone there has been a 71% increase in car theft compared to the same period in 2008. If Fekter’s and Häupl’s measures are at all successful, they may help to increase the overall feeling of safety.
For Linda Eid, a student in Vienna, however all these measures come too late. Eid is one of the many victims in the Austrian capital. While away on summer holiday, her apartment was robbed; even though she didn’t “have much worth stealing,” the thieves took all the electronic devices from her apartment, along with two expensive hand bags and some jewelry.
“You cannot imagine how depressing that was,” Eid says. “The whole place was upside-down, they had taken almost everything, including things that had emotional value for me, presents from my family.” Eid said any hopes she had of hearing from the police are fading more every day.
“One of the neighbors told me he had seen two men coming out of the building, carrying the two bags – my purses. They weren’t even hiding!” Eid says, amazed by the brazenness of the thieves.
A number of contributing factors add up to a dismal rise in the crime rate in the Austrian capital. Most agree that the financial crisis plays a part, with the poor getting poorer and therefore, more desperate.
But the biggest concern for many Austrians is the opening of the borders to the East with the fall of the Iron Curtain two decades ago. Critics of the free borders point to the disproportionate large number of foreigners that are culprits - and use these arguments against the majority of immigrants who themselves are often the victims, living as they do in the more hardscrabble parts of the city.
For Norbert Ceipek, of Drehscheibe Augarten, a crisis center of the Viennese youth welfare office, “the connection is obvious, when you consider the number of foreign culprits.” At the center he works with displaced children and teenagers from Eastern Europe who had been forced into prostitution, and stealing.
“I think of Eastern Europe as Europe’s warehouse. There are people who take all opportunities to get what they want, at all costs,” he explains, insisting however, that it is important not to lump everyone together. “This group is just a minority. Eastern Europeans are also frustrated about the rise in crime as it severely damages the reputation of their countries.”
Dr. Anton Pelinka, professor of political science at the Central European University in Budapest, disagrees, however, about the connection of the crime rate to the opening of Austria’s Eastern borders.
“In this regard I would be very cautious,” he said. “I neither see a contradiction nor a connection. The fact is that with Schengen, new conditions came into force. The borders are now under European control. That’s the same level of control that has formerly been there under the Austrians.”
Instead Professor Pelinka points to “a specific criminal energy in countries like Moldava and Romania” as the cause of the problem.
Whatever the source, the Viennese are worried. A survey carried out by the polling institute IMAS in May and June showed that eight out of ten Austrians have the impression that crime has risen over the last 10 years, and over 60% blame immigration.
So Austria’s politicians have a major challenge ahead to restore the society’s overall feeling of safety. And turn Vienna back into a village.
Today’s statistics tell a very different story. The Austrian capital presently stands at the top of the chart in crimes committed nationwide – with the number of reported incidents increasing by 12.3% for the first half of 2009 alone over the same period last year. This is unprecedented, according to the Federal Crime Bureau.
I think that is rather expected that Vienna would take the nationwide lead. Vienna is really the only big city in Austria, with an Urban Area of over 2,000,000 while the next largest city Graz has only a little more than a 10th of the population.
Vienna has always had a higher percentage of crime but I really think you would find that a norm in any country of comparable size. As far as crime and eastern Europeans, I think we would be hard pushed to be politically correct here and say… no it is not so. But I think many of the criminals are also victims. Nothing like your own countrymen to use and abuse you.
Quote:
It would foolish of me to discount the possibility that you might turn out to be right, but I disagree. I don't think we are in for some inevitable progression (or regression?).
I actually hope you are right, it really is disappointing and scary to see this progression (or regression?). But it seems to be the bad side effect of what some would call progress.
Today’s statistics tell a very different story. The Austrian capital presently stands at the top of the chart in crimes committed nationwide – with the number of reported incidents increasing by 12.3% for the first half of 2009 alone over the same period last year. This is unprecedented, according to the Federal Crime Bureau.
I think that is rather expected that Vienna would take the nationwide lead. Vienna is really the only big city in Austria, with an Urban Area of over 2,000,000 while the next largest city Graz has only a little more than a 10th of the population.
Vienna has always had a higher percentage of crime but I really think you would find that a norm in any country of comparable size. As far as crime and eastern Europeans, I think we would be hard pushed to be politically correct here and say… no it is not so. But I think many of the criminals are also victims. Nothing like your own countrymen to use and abuse you.
To quote part of Silvia's text, when I was new here (been here for nearly a decade) and would hear grumbling about crime from eastern Europe I thought that people were just being racist. And certainly not all of the crime that gets commited here is commited by eastern Europeans. HOWEVER over my time here more and more people that I personally know have been touched by crime. And in almost all of the cases, the police flat-out said that the perps were probably from eastern Europe and the property was probably already out of the country. This is not just what I have heard from friends-- when we dealt with the police when my husband's car was broken into (not even a fancy car, has an alarm, and in broad daylight), they said that to us as well.
Also I think some crime here goes unreported. On one hand one of Vienna's selling point is its safety-- for example, when I moved here at the beginning of the 2000s, one of the "selling points" for Vienna was the personal safety of women, that it was safe for a woman to walk home on her own even late at night-- yet over time more and more women that I personally know-- both foreign and Austrian and from various areas (not concentrated in one district) seem to have a story of uncomfortable situations, if nothing else. (Personally I was grabbed on the u-bahn and followed and no one reacted to my screams-- and there are no visible police/security people to go to in many u-bahn stations.)
Also it's not just Vienna. I live on the outskirts and spend quite a lot of time in Lower Austria and people in towns near Vienna are also feeling the effects of more crime-- for example, more home breakins, car breakins, etc.
Also since I've lived here I notice a lot more graffitti, trash, etc.- I don't feel that Vienna is as clean as it once was. Again not contained to one particular district. In general I agree with the 20 years behind things-- not just on this issue but other things as well (business hours/practices, and length of school day, just to name a few. But that's slightly off-topic.)
I really, really don't like the FPOe and I know that Strache isn't talking about the crime issue just for the betterment of society but at least someone is-- because I really feel that Vienna is going downhill when it comes to crime.
Edited to add that due to something during the quote process the first 2 paragraphs were something I tried to quote (and was then unable to fix) from Silvia but came out looking as if I wrote them. My apologies.
Last edited by Viennamom on Tue Jan 26, 2010 5:04 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 333 Location: Vienna 1030
Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 4:18 pm Post subject:
Parsifal wrote:
People of VV - help me out! Am I being unfairly hostile to blueorange? I don't think so. Pointing out that Wien does not have 'the same number of murders as in some of the most dangerous capitals in the world' is hardly uncivil.
Only just noticed this thread and no, of course you're not being unfairly hostile or, indeed, vitriolic. "Nonsense" is a perfectly valid and measured response to this kind of FPÖ-friendly scaremongering. As for that "Criminals at Large" article, it's just sensationalist journalists scrabbling around for a story. The idea that there is an imminent "collapse in public security" here is somewhat laughable. Let's not forget that Vienna is the city in the world with the highest quality of life as measured by the annual Mercer survey, and that violent crime is still very rare here.
While I'm "still" 6600 miles away, it seems to me that most of the underpinnings have the murmurings of issues with immigration. Language requirements in the near future for visas look almost inevitable.
If there was formidable proof that in deed foreigners were responsible for the latest up tick in crime, who's to blame the government for trying to stem the influx of immigrants?
I know that even in our home town of 15,000 people there are beggars on almost all major streets. Murder, robberies, car theft, rapes, etc... are all on the rise even in a small town that is still considered safe. To me, Vienna sounds relatively quiet.
Very well put Viennamom. I had this discussion with a friend of mine last night and we both agreed if any name other than Strache was behind this article then there would be less of a debate.
I am sure, your right. The problem with him and the rest of the far right is they like to use scare tactics to get people to their sides, and then they always turn out to be far scarier than the threat they used to win one over. And he is really not saying anything new.
And come to think of it wasn’t it the OVP / FPO Coalition who were responsible for the budget cuts that left less policemen on the street?
Last edited by Silvia on Wed Jan 27, 2010 12:50 pm; edited 1 time in total
The funny thing is that Strache, with this kind of declarations, will make it harder for immigrants outside schengen to enter Austria (as if it wasn't hard already!); so family reunification, residence and citizenship will become even tougher for "decent" foreigners...
While the real culprits (according to reports mostly organized crime groups from "new" schengen states) are at large and immune to any immigration measure, since they are schengen after all...
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