Drug trafficking and car theft are major areas of organized crime in Berlin. (Archive photo)
© dpa
In the area of organized crime, the Berlin police recorded damages amounting to €6.9 million in 2024.
This was the result of 55 major investigations involving 371 known suspects, as reported in the published 2024 organized crime situation report.
According to the report, the police and public prosecutors seized assets worth €2.9 million. However, the overview only shows the crimes and amounts of damage known to the police—the number of undetected crimes is very high. Twenty of the 55 investigations involved drug trafficking and smuggling. Car theft, burglary, and human trafficking also played a significant role. Other cases involved armament and arms trafficking. Forty investigations were conducted by the Berlin police, nine by customs, and three each by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Federal Police.
With 55 organized crime complexes out of a total of 647 cases prosecuted in Germany, Berlin ranks fifth after the larger states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg. Police statistics define organized crime as the systematic commission of criminal offenses in which at least three participants use commercial or business-like structures over a longer period of time. This is accompanied by either the use of violence or influence on politics or the economy. A large proportion of general crime therefore does not fall under the OC definition because there are no fixed structures and the participants change. The police then define much of this as "serious structural crime (SsK)".