Daily: Police fail to bring proceedings increasingly often
With crime inching up in recent years, the police are increasingly deciding not to initiate proceedings after receiving reports of offenses, citing a lack of resources, the Õhtuleht newspaper wrote Wednesday.
According to data published in Õhtuleht, while the number of registered crimes remained slightly below 26,000 annually from 2020 to 2022, it rose to nearly 27,500 last year. The number of solved crimes stayed around 16,000 from 2018 to 2021 but dropped to approximately 13,000 in 2022 and remained at that level last year.
However, the number of crime reports for which proceedings were not initiated has increased over the past three years: there were 4,008 such cases in 2021, 4,183 in 2022 and 4,719 last year.
"We don't have the resources (read: people – Õhtuleht) to investigate these cases with the same thoroughness," Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) Director General Egert Belitšev told the newspaper. "Each budget cut has reduced the number of cases we can handle," he added.
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Editor: Mait Ots, Marcus Turovski
