Public TV in Germany did a short piece over the weekend which caught my attention. If you go around and privately talk to people.....crime and the threat of terrorism....rank near the top of people's priorities.
Yet the cops and authorities will openly (across all sixteen states of Germany) show the numbers, and they indicate that most all crime has dropped over the past five years. It doesn't matter if you talk about home break-in's, car theft, or assault.
So to take on the public perception, the cops have taken to measures to just 'reassure' the public. That means patrols take place in public places, with cops walking around (not in cars). It means that places that have drug trafficking....will see a raid occasionally to demonstrate a presence. All of this is to convince the public that there really isn't a big problem with crime.
The general issue I see....if you are over the age of fifty and experienced life in either East or West Germany in the 1970s/1980s....you have a pretty direct view of 'safety' and life in unified Germany of today doesn't match up. Some of this has to do with a society that was mostly all Germans. Some of this has involve ramped-up drug use. Some of this centers on juvenile bad behavior that didn't exist in the 70s/80s (finding 15 year old kids around fest areas today in an extremely drunken state isn't shocking anymore).
Whether or not this PR attempt works....is the real question mark. The numbers say that Germany is safer than it was a decade ago.
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