At this year's symposium on combating clan crime, Interior Minister Herbert Reul presented the new situation report and took stock of the past five years: "North Rhine-Westphalia is no longer a honeypot for criminal clans. The clans are burning their fingers on our zero tolerance strategy, the police and our investigators. We are successfully harassing them, taking their illegal millions away from the criminals and doing everything we can to ensure that those who want out can get out," said Reul in front of more than one hundred participants.
Police experts from the fields of operations, investigations and prevention took part in the conference in Neuss. Also present were representatives from politics, Ruhr area municipalities, the Ruhr Security Cooperation (SiKo Ruhr) and investigators from the district police authorities who fight organized crime on a daily basis. The experience report by Linda Staaf from the Swedish police, who spoke about her fight against criminal clans, was particularly exciting.
From the new and fourth clan situation report, the asset confiscation measures stand out in particular: while the police confiscated just under 4 million euros in 2020, the figure for 2021 was around 10.2 million euros - more than twice as much. Among other things, the police seized cash amounting to 8.4 million euros and real estate worth 1.1 million euros. "We've been talking about illegal clan millions for a long time now, not just small stuff. It's getting to them," says Reul.
Further findings from the situation report:
- In 2017, 24 arrest warrants were issued against criminal clan members. In 2020 there were 36 and in 2021 there were 49. Reul: "We have seen the number of arrest warrants more than double during our time in government."
- The number of crimes committed by criminal clan members fell by 5.8 percent in 2021: from 5,778 crimes in 2020 to 5,462 in 2021
- The number of suspects fell by 5.1% from 3,826 in 2020 to 3,629 in 2021
- The Ruhr region continues to be the main area of activity for clan criminals. Most crimes were recorded in Essen in 2021, followed by Recklinghausen, Gelsenkirchen, Duisburg and Bochum.
- Of a total of 90 organized crime (OC) investigations recorded in 2021, 18 were dominated by clan families of Turkish-Arab origin. This means that one in five OC proceedings has clan connections. The focus of these OC proceedings is predominantly in the area of organized drug crime.
- The majority of crimes committed by criminal clans overall are crimes of violence and crimes against personal freedom (28%). These offenses include crimes such as robbery, threats and assaults of all kinds. The increase of almost 40 percent compared to the previous year in crimes against sexual self-determination is striking. There were 99 cases in 2020 and 138 in 2021, including all sexual offenses such as sexual harassment.
- Property and counterfeiting offenses account for around 16 percent of all crimes recorded in the situation report in 2021.
- The proportion of traffic offenses has increased slightly. They account for 13.6 percent
- In 2021, 4.5 percent of suspects committed almost a quarter (21.9 percent) of all crimes. Interior Minister Reul: "In general, we continue to observe that we are dealing with pronounced intensive offenders in clan crime. This shows how important it is to start combating prolific offenders at an early stage and to take preventative action, especially with adolescents."
- For this reason, prevention is an important pillar in the fight against clan crime: “We are currently working with 34 children from criminal family clans known to the police at seven locations in the Ruhr region,” explained Reul.
- The number of criminal clan names has hardly changed and now stands at 113 (2020: 112). Reul: "Most people with the corresponding surnames have not done anything wrong. But it doesn't help to fall back into old debates that only lead to the problem not being clearly named because someone is supposedly stigmatized. We need to clearly name the horse and rider instead of talking around it. Only then will we still have a chance of successfully tackling these structures that have grown over decades."
