Austrian police failed to significantly improve their success rate last year, new figures show.Federal Crime Office (BK) director Franz Lang announced today (Tues) the number of reported crimes declined by 9.4 per cent year on year in 2010 to 535,745 cases. Lang also said police in Austrias nine provinces managed to solve 41.4 per cent […]
A special Austrian police unit will assist their Polish counterparts in getting ready for a major sports event.Austrian Peoples Party (ÖVP) Interior Minister Maria Fekter announced today (Fri) that a team of Cobra unit officers will meet with special police forces in Poland later this year to discuss security measures for next years European Football […]
The discovery of a wartime hand grenade caused panic in Vienna yesterday (Tues).Workers called the police after unearthing the World War Two era grenade during excavation activities at a building site in Landstraße district yesterday morning, police in the capital announced today.Explosives experts of the federal interior ministry, who were alerted by police, secured the […]
A police officer who mistook an African-American teacher for a drug dealer has been fined by a court nearly two years after the incident which made international headlines.Mike Brennan from Jacksonville, Florida, who works at Vienna International School (VIS), went on sick leave for several weeks after the incident in February 2009 in which he […]
A German man lost his licence after he was caught speeding by a radar trap three times on the same day.Traffic police followed and stopped the 28-year-old tourist after the third offence in the town centre of Innsbruck, Tyrol, yesterday (Sun). Officials said today the man was going at 120 kilometres per hour (kph) in […]
A Lower Austrian who called help for his injured father could have killed the man, according to police.Officials in Schwechat near Vienna said today (Thurs) the 48-year-old was put in custody after ringing up the local police department this morning. The man asked officers to send an ambulance as his 78-year-old dad was “seriously wounded”.Paramedics […]
An amateurish burglar was arrested after downing a bottle of wine and falling asleep in a coffin.The man, whose identity was withheld by police in Vienna, broke into an undertakers in Penzing district on Tuesday night. Undertaker Heinrich Altbart discovered the man fast asleep in one of the coffins the next morning. The 25-year-old intruder […]
More than a dozen police officers from Carinthia are currently supporting their colleagues in Tyrol to fight the growing number of ski thefts.There were 2,724 reported cases of ski thefts in Tyrol last year, up by 13.2 per cent compared to 2008. Figures also increased in five other of Austrias overall nine provinces year on […]
A convict allowed to spend the final months of his jail term at home wearing an electronic ankle shackle has been sent back to prison after having beaten up his wife.The 27-year-old man was arrested in Hohenems, Vorarlberg, and put behind bars in again in a prison in Feldkirch after his wife, 35, told police […]
Watches worth a quarter of a million Euros were stolen from a jeweller in a spectacular break-in on Christmas Day (Saturday), police said today (Mon).The unidentified criminals made off with 25 watches worth an overall 250,000 Euros in the break-in at a shop in the town centre of Kitzbühel, a posh Tyrolean ski resort.The burglary […]