Aug 12, 2009

Is Geneva less safe?

On the 16th of July, a Saudi tourist was violently mugged near the Central Station. He remained in coma for ten days. According to the Saudi consulate, the Police in Geneva did not take the case seriously up until it was found that money was taken from its account through the stolen credit card. Now that the story has been reported on Al Arabyia, the powerful broadcast in the Arab World, the The Geneva minister in charge of the police Laurent Moutinot, is taking initiatives, although he defensively claims that "Geneva is not the Bronx". Better late than never? We at Rigotnomics already acknowledged that there is a problem in Geneva about crime. Maybe the image of the city won't suffer too much, but authorities should recognize that serious action is needed because the general perception is that the city is not as safe as it used to be. The story is reported here.

4 comments:

Pierre-Louis said...

yeah the police is not taken things seriously...I'm getting emails from the New Haven police everyday about who got robbed, where, and at what time...OK that is a bit extreme and may make me paranoiac but I guess at leats it shows the police is tracking the problem...just having an online map with time and location of crimes would be a great initiative...

Victoria said...

I'm from one of the most pick pocket savvy places in Europe-Spain-and I lived in Washington DC and in countries in Central America, but the only time I had everything stolen from me (passport, wallet, phone, keys) was in Geneva...

in a high end, PRIVATE party at that in a lounge. To this day, I am really convinced that someone in staff took it.

I don't want to advocate cities where law enforcement is paranoid about crime, but damn, I wish they would stop focusing so much on free riders on the tram and instead deal with these kinds of issues.

Victoria said...

its also interesting to see whether this crime was directed specifically at this guy for being Saudi. Tourism by the Gulf countries in Geneva is huge. Honestly, most of these people coming from the Gulf have no clue or notion about things like petty theft, street crime and intimidation because they don't really exist in large scale in their countries of origin. Plus most of them are loaded with money. Thus, they are often victims of such crimes. In fact, I know many who refuse to say their nationality when abroad because they are scared it will make them walking targets.

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