Wolfgang Neiß

Wolfgang Neiß

The criminal police get involved whenever a crime is reported. But for several years, we have observed that there are categories of offence, which are hardly ever reported. Examples include narcotics trafficking, arms dealing, human trafficking, corruption and many other areas in which little ever happened from a criminal police standpoint, because there simply weren’t any crimes reported.

We recognised that we weren’t getting any insight into certain areas of crime. We had to recognise that, suddenly, entire trucks were being stolen in Germany, along with their loads. And these loads were not exactly destined for private use.

The classic methods of fighting crime were no longer sufficient, meaning searches, interrogations, sifting through documents. Members of organised crime take great pains not to leave any trace. You can only convict them with essentially subversive methods, more or less. That includes surveillance, for example; it includes using information from internal sources, for example. It also includes observing individuals. It includes tapping phones – a method that was very restricted at first, but then grew in importance.

Fundamentally, organised crime satisfies the population’s demand for illegal goods and services. Its goal is to make as much money as possible.

Furthermore, we will never be able to successfully combat organised crime so long as there continues to be demand among the population for the products that organised crime offers. And that´s not going to change.