Crime
As in other large Russian cities, Saint Petersburg experiences fairly high levels of street crime and bribery. In addition, in recent years there has been a noticeable increase in racially motivated violence. On the other hand, unlike in Moscow, there have been no major terrorist attacks in St. Petersburg in recent years. Between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Saint Petersburg became home to a number of gangs, such as the Tambov Gang, Malyshev Gang, Kazan gang, and other ethnic criminal groups, who engaged in racketeering, extortion and often violent clashes with each other.
After the sensational assassinations of City Property Committee Chairman Mikhail Manevich (1997), State Duma deputy Galina Starovoytova (1998), acting City Legislature Speaker Viktor Novosyolov (1999) and a number of prominent businesspeople, Saint Petersburg was dubbed capital of crime in the Russian press.
Read more about this topic: Government Of Saint Petersburg
Famous quotes containing the word crime:
“Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that specieas alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
“Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“It does make a big difference, it is why Robin Hood lives,
crime if you know the reason if you know the motive
if you can understand the character if it is not a
normal one is not interesting a crime in itself is
not interesting it is only there and when it is there
everybody has to take notice of it. It is important
in that way but in every other way it is not
important.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)