The above Facebook post by the police of the district Vorpommern-Greifswald went viral in Germany. The north-eastern district counts 237,700 inhabitants and has so far placed about 2,000 refugees within its borders. The police of the district had numerous rumour fuelled inquiries by worried locals and guests of the seaside region about crime rates rising since the refugees came. They decided to answer them all via Facebook. Here is what they wrote:

“The Vorpommern-Greifswald district has now received about 2000 refugees. That's still less than 1% of the general population.

No, there hasn’t been more shoplifting. (Since the refugees came)

No, there haven’t been more burglaries.

No, there haven’t been more bicycle thefts.

No, there haven’t been more stabbings nor rape.”

The Facebook post by the police of the district has so far received almost 33,000 “Likes” and was shared nearly 12,000 times.

Of course it’s not always puppies and kittens. The chief of the German police union, Rainer Wendt, has admitted that the scale of migrant violence may be larger than the media is reporting because police are not reporting all incidents to avoid scaring the public. “The public does not know everything,” he said.

This past weekend there have also been reports of larger scale brawls at migrant centres and incidents involving knives (Prien am Chiemsee).