Prague/Vienna - In 2010, Vienna police managed to resolve all 18 murders that took place in the Austrian capital in the 12 months. Police president Gerhard Pürstl said he does not remember a year when all murders were resolved in the same year. "We are almost as in Columbo", he smiled, referring to the famous US criminal series, starring Peter Falk.
Vienna's success only underlines problems in Prague, the capital of the neighboring Czech Republic.
In Vienna, a city of 1,700,000, 18 murders were registered in 2010. Prague, with only 1,250,000 people, had 22 murders in the same year, according to police statistics. Only 19 of them were resolved.
This means that in Vienna, 100 percent of murder cases reached complete resolution. In Prague, only 86 percent.
In terms of general resolution rate, Vienna police resolved 31.7 percent of 207,564 crimes committed in the city in 2010.
In Prague, out of the 74,028 crimes committed in 2010, police managed to resolve only 13.986. Which means only 18.9 percent.
In comparison, the rest of the Czech Republic's regions have much higher resolution rates, between 36 to 64 percent. Which is not bad - Austria's states, with the exception of the capital, have their resolution rates ranging between 43 and 57 percent.
Grand Theft Auto
It appears that cars are equally important for the Czech Republic's black economy as they are for the legal business.
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Austria's Interior Ministry claims that the number of stolen cars dropped from 5.297 in 2009 to 2.617 in 2010. In the Czech Republic, the number is five times higher. In 2010, 12.349 cars were stolen in the country.
Crime resolution rate in Austria was positively influenced by a raid against a Georgian crime group from March 2010. The action codenamed Conductor resulted in the arrest of 400 people. This led to a 30 percent decrease of burglaries in Vienna.
Criminal groups originating in the former East Bloc dominate also the crime in Prague.
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However, in both countries, and all over Europe, crime rates are steadily decreasing. Austria reported a year-to-year decrease of 9.4 percent in 2010, the Czech Republic a drop equaling 5.8 percent.
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