In the first seven days of September, German police responded to more than 100 crimes occurred in which a knife was used. This is according to a new website called Messerinzidenz (Knife Incidence), which analyses police reports daily to create a live knife crime tracker. The frequency and severity of this now-common crime makes clear that ‘isolated incidents’ add up to a chilling reality.
Numerous knife attacks occur on Germany’s streets every day—but most of them are not even recorded by the media. In order to make the number of daily knife attacks more visible, a developer has now published an interactive map of Germany on which new cases are recorded in real time and displayed geographically and with source references.
“Raise awareness”
According to the developer,
This project is based on a comprehensive collection and aggregation of police press releases from across Germany relating to incidents involving knives or other stabbing weapons.
The aim is to provide a transparent picture of the extent and distribution of these crimes across the country in real time. By visualising the data on an interactive map, citizens, researchers and policy makers can gain a better understanding of the occurrence and frequency of knife crimes in different regions. The knife incidence is intended to help raise awareness while also sparking informed discussions about safety in Germany.
In the first seven days of September alone, more than 100 knife attacks were registered. In addition, there is an unknown number of unreported cases because the police are not necessarily required to report them.
The figures presented on the website are based exclusively on police reports, which are searched using artificial intelligence for keywords related to stabbing weapons. However, the website actively points out that due to the police reporting and processing process, not all knife attacks are communicated publicly. And, of course, the police are not called for every crime. According to the site:
Knife attacks are reported almost daily in the news, but these reports often only show the most extreme cases. The true dimension of knife violence often remains hidden, as many incidents are lost in regional press releases. Messerinzidenz.de ensures transparency by continuously searching all regional police reports and publishing relevant reports on knife crimes here with reference to the source.
Data collection
The site’s developer explains how incidents get recorded on the site:
- Act occurs. A crime occurs and the police are called. (NOTE: Not all crimes involve calling the police.)
- An incident is documented. The crime is documented in a police case processing system. Since January 2020, knife attacks have been recorded there as a “phenomenon.” (NOTE: Crimes in which a knife was involved but not used as an instrument are not recorded.)
- Incident is published. The incident is published in a press release or representatives of the press ask the police. (NOTE: There is no obligation for the police to publish incidents.)
- Messerinzidenz.de reads press releases. The developer provides a list of police press release websites and key word searched.
- Messerinzidenz.de adds the incident. If the press release contains one of the keywords, the incident will be displayed on the website.
The website notes that it cannot, at this point, be used as a comparison tool:
The aggregated knife incidence figures cannot be compared with other statistics such as the PKS (Police Crime Statistics). In the sense of recording crimes in the PKS, “knife attacks” are: “[…] those acts in which the attack with a knife is threatened or carried out directly against a person. Simply carrying a knife, however, is not sufficient for it to be recorded as a knife attack. [Source: PKS 2023 ,p.15 ]”
In addition, the site notes that there will obviously be instances of under-recording due to the above-mentioned unreported figures (as noted in 1, 2, and 3 above).
On the other hand, there is possible double counting, as the same act may be published on different portals (e.g. in joint press releases from different authorities) or when there are update reports on press releases.
The website stresses that the inclusion of a knife incident is “a “non-judgmental indicator”—it is up to journalists and politicians to decide whether a certain number of incidents is alarming or acceptable.
The data analysis project has future plans to expand to include automatic duplicate detection, an export function for the raw data, overall data for each state, comparative values for the previous year and for police crime statistics, and an integrated heat map.
