Serious offences defy downward crime trend
Serious offences rose last year in Switzerland while the overall number of crimes fell, the Federal Police Office reported on Thursday.
Of the 279,274 offences recorded last year – down more than three per cent over 2006 – nearly 240,000 were theft-related.
More than half of all suspects were foreigners, 72 per cent of whom were resident in Switzerland.
The number of rapes – 648 – followed the trend of increasing violent crime; the total number of sex-related crimes rose by over 200 to 3,767.
Narcotics cases in 2007 stood at nearly 47,000, roughly the same as the previous year. Of those, 37,030 were related to consumption.
The quantity of seized cocaine rose for the third year in a row to 404 kilograms, while seizures of heroin fell to 135 kilograms seized compared with 231 in 2006, the police office said.
Embezzlement fell by almost a fifth, arson by nearly 8 per cent, but robbery was up 14 per cent and blackmail rose 53 per cent. The proportion of crimes committed by minors remained at less than 20 per cent
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