Police say murder, robbery and assault rate on decline in Moscow, Russia
MOSCOW. Nov 7 (Interfax) - Moscow police criminal investigative division chief Maj. Gen. Igor Zinoviev has announced a decline in the rate of organized crime.
"Here are the statistics for Moscow. A total of 299 murders were detected in the first nine months [of this year], which is 37 fewer than the year before. We had about 1,900 [murders] in 1994-1995! The number of murders committed with the use of firearms has declined massively although it is possible to adapt non-lethal handguns to fire live ammunition at home," Zinoviev said in an interview published by Kommersant on Friday.
The country recorded 633 abductions in 2009 and 282 in the first nine months of this year. The robbery rate exceeded 205,000 in 2009 and approximately 58,000 this year. More than 30,000 assaults were committed in 2009 and slightly more than 10,000 in the first nine months of 2014, he said.
"The rate has been declining steadily, year after year," the police division chief said.
However, organized crime remains a serious problem and the police are giving it a lot of attention, he said.
Zinoviev said the police had about 480 "thieves in law" on their records. Some 300 of them have origins in Georgia and Abkhazia. A total of 213 "thieves in law" are in Russia now, about 80 are serving time in prison in Russia and about 25 in foreign countries.