© dpa
In future, the Berlin police will publish current data records on the theft of car parts or from cars on a daily basis.
© dpa
Car parts such as steering wheels, on-board computers, navigation systems, airbags, catalytic converters, wheels, license plates and even loose parts such as laptops and cell phones lying around in the car are stolen.
For almost four years, the Berlin police have been publishing every reported bicycle theft, including the area, time and other information, as a freely accessible data record - now the service is being expanded.
Data on thefts from cars and car parts will also be added to Berlin's open data platform from tomorrow, Tuesday (June 10), as the deputy head of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA), Stefan Redlich, told dpa.
Experience with the freely available data on bike theft has been so good that the project is being continued. "We want to arouse interest and creativity and use the expertise of various users in the evaluation," said Redlich. These could range from universities, companies and authorities to interested individuals or initiatives.
As many as 36,841 of these "thefts to/from motor vehicles" were reported to and registered by the police in Berlin last year. Car parts such as steering wheels, on-board computers, navigation systems, airbags, catalytic converters, wheels, license plates and even loose parts such as laptops and cell phones lying around in the car are stolen. Only just under 2,000 of these thefts are solved, which is only around 5 percent. Data on each of these theft reports from the previous day is now published by the police on a daily basis and can be accessed and used by anyone interested.
According to the police, the data set as a table is so-called "unprocessed, daily updated raw data". It contains the day and time of the theft, the type of item stolen and the perpetrators' actions, the amount of damage and the location of the crime. For data protection reasons, the location is not given with the street and house number, but as one of 542 so-called planning areas in Berlin - these are defined areas of various sizes. The police also retrospectively put almost 39,000 thefts from 2024 online. The data is automatically transferred daily from the police recording systems. The police are being advised by the Berlin Technology Foundation.
There are already numerous types of data available. This ranges from weather information and flight data to parking spaces, e-charging stations and current traffic situations. The data comes primarily from public authorities and other government institutions. It is often processed and visualized by apps and used by millions of people.
This is also the case with the data on bicycle thefts that has been published for four years, said Redlich from the LKA. Apps have been developed and bachelor's and master's theses written at universities for this purpose. A newspaper prepares the data in the form of a "bicycle theft counter". It shows where and when the most bikes are stolen, how much they were worth and how many bike owners have been affected each year. "You can see that people are creative and handle the data scientifically," said Redlich. "There have been no negative effects and no misuse of the data." A further expansion of the publications would be conceivable in the future. The police's databases on crime are much larger.