Last weekend my wife's wallet got stolen at the Geneva train station while she was getting on the train with our son. I guess people with children make easy targets.

When we reported the crime, we asked how many pick pocket related incidents where reported during the first weekend in 2011, around the train station. The answer: around 400 (Friday through Sunday).

Why is there hardly any CCTV on the Geneva train station (or if there is, it is pretty discreet)? I would not be surprised if there is a group of repeat offenders who are responsible for the bulk of the incidents. I am not a proponent of CCTV but with 400 incidents in 3 days might it not be a good idea?

In any railway station anywhere in the world you get an above averageaamount of petty theft and prostitution. Geneve is no exception.

There is CCTV in Genevba but please, have you noted the amount of building/reconstruction work trhat the station is currently undergoing ?

Effective CCTV would be very expensive to make work properly, each time re-locating cameras, re-wiring during a major construction programe, and all this for what amounts to your carlesness as there are signs warning you about pickpockets in Geenva, i know as they were pointed out to me when i was pick pocketed !

My understanding is that catching the thieves isn't really the main issue, but after that they need to be brought in front of a judge and that's where the system is quite lenient.

Just brought my calculator up. 400 in 3 days means 133 per day and this means only 5 to 6 per hour. And this is not too bad really . I don't know whether the situation in Zurich is better or worse but suspect that it is fairly comparable ! And what about the CCTV ? Criminals know about this techno-thing fairly well and have started to take that stuff well into their procedure.

Quite to the contrary, to catch the thieves and to PROVE their misdoing is THE main thing. The thieves unfortunately profit of correct justice. But as former German Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said "der Rechtsstaat ist unteilbar" (the legal state is indivisable), which means that you cannot have a decent and correct justice on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and a sharp relentless judiciary on Tuesday and Thursday. In short, the problem is not the "system", the problem is indeed the investigations side.

Between 10 pm and 8 am there are not many victims and criminals about..
I think you can count at least 10 per hour.

Shall we start a vigilante team? Next Saturday? Anyone ready for a dust up in Geneva?

.

I will bring the popcorn and come to watch

Chicken!

I think even 5-6 per hour is too much. We don't even have that down here in BA!

Chicken don't eat popcorn

Interesting point you raise. However in Geneva, fines for this kind of offenses are based on the person's income - which means that a thief with very little official income would get away with very low fines.

Here's a link to an interesting article on Swissinfo (sorry couldn't find the english version - this is what Google managed to translate from the french article) http://translate.google.com/translat...%26prmd%3Divns

Hehe! Good! Don't want the taste of my next KFC bucket ruined by popcorn flavaZ

Not only you called me a chicken but rather a KFC chicken

You should be honoured

Will keep a look out for you at Saturday night's "dust up" led by @Ittigen

If they don't have income they get supervised work on Saturdays, often in the forests. I think for every Sfr 25 fine they have to do 1 hour work. My lodger couldn't pay a CHF 600 fine (Riding trains with no valid tickets) and was very surprised to find it was Saturday work or prison!

Unfortunately much of the crime at stations is by illegals, so we would have to arrest them and bring them to the police on Platform 1.
Police<IMG alt=">" src="http://s.staticlocal.ch/images/arrow_black.png">Gendarmerie
Cornavin

Ouvert 24h/24h - 7j/7j
place de Cornavin 3-7
1201 Genève

Phone:*022 388 61 00

old lady even got robbed here last saturday (81 years old) IN BULLE??????????

Switzerland is safe but you can feel the changes coming.......

I don't know about BA, but what I can see is that after 6pm you in Zürich HB and around it can see quite many policemen and security guards on patrol. I heard that crime around Zch-HB is clearly less than in Geneva-Cornavin, which if correct might prove that a heavy police presence DOES work.

Or maybe a KFC Popcorn chicken?


Back on topic, 400 thefts in three days sounds like a major crime wave to me.

I once pulled the crime-statistics for both GE and ZH (canton, not city) and IIRC, Zurich had a bit less crime in the "theft" categorie then GE - at about double the size in population.
For pocket-theft, this link says:
http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/pd/de/in...ebstaehle.html

"In den letzten fünf Jahren intensivierte die Stadtpolizei Zürich die Fahndung nach Trick- und Taschendieben. Dadurch konnte die Anzahl der angezeigten Delikte in der Stadt Zürich von rund 5'000 auf rund 3'000 reduziert werden"

Basically, this means there are about 3000 pocket-thefts per year in the city of ZH now (compared to 5000 some years ago).
Works out to around 8 or 9 per day.

Video-surveillance does little to prevent this kind of crime.
Only consequent criminal prosecution of the criminals helps (to a certain degree - they will move to places with less strict prosecution, following the path of least resistance).

The article describes a training the police officers had by a "pocket-theft-artist" from a circus that was in town.

What matters is that such a thief is caught, brought to court and has to go through the whole procedure. To put him/her into prison for whatever period does not improve the matter at all. What matters is that his data is taken down. AND at least in the Canton of Zurich, repeat offenders do not get away with financial fines. This is what judges are for. To make a difference between this and that. And to differentiate. This is what Mr Schmidt had (has) in his mind, that the judiciary is not a medieval revenge apparatus but an independent judiciary trying to help the law through in a correct and decent and adequate way. Yes Sir, this IS a challenge. A cousin of me for a few months had to act as judge in a "Bezirksgericht" of the Canton of Berne and found the job extremely challenging and tiring. What he told me about brought me to the conclusion that he did not believe in lengthy prison sentences but most of all in the simple point that the culprits had to face the court and had to face justice. Yes, he in a few cases was forced to be tough, not by anybody in particular but simply by existing laws.