Düsseldorf (dpa/lnw) – Between the beginning of January 2021 and the end of June 2022, the police in North Rhine-Westphalia registered 7,371 crimes involving “stabbing weapons”. However, the figures for the first half of 2022 could still change, according to the Ministry of the Interior in its response to a small query from the AfD in the state parliament.
So-called knife crimes have only been individually evaluated in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2019. At that time there were 6827 such cases. In 2020 there were significantly fewer with 5700 cases. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the numbers fell again in 2021. The current paper from the Ministry of the Interior does not show separate figures for 2021 and 2022.
According to the ministry, the proportion of suspects identified without a German passport was 39.8 percent in 2021 and 41.7 percent in the first half of 2022.