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GENERAL OVERVIEW

The post-war period of 1999 was the very beginning of the International Police presence in Kosovo. During this time Kosovo saw a tremendous surge in revenge killings and ethnic violence. Since that time, as UNMIK Police, in cooperation with KFOR, and the Kosovo Police Service have established themselves as the law enforcement authorities in the province and as a result crime has exhibited two contradictory trends. The first trend is the obvious increase in the number of crimes being reported to police as confidence in the police has risen among the local communities. The second trend is the decreasing number of incidents of violence as a whole as the local society has tried to resume normal lives. These two conflicting trends have made crime analysis difficult because of the misleading numbers of crime that were being recorded by police authorities.

Initially, citizens were reluctant to seek the help and protection of the international police. During the year 2000, the number of serious crimes committed against individuals was reported to have been much higher than 1999, despite the perception that society in Kosovo was beginning to stabilize. Now, as the Kosovo Police Service, comprised of local citizens, has assumed more direct operational authority in Kosovo, the number of serious crimes reported appears to be dropping as other crimes such as petty theft are on the increase. This leads the police to surmise that as life has returned to normal for the citizens, the crime patterns are starting to resemble the same patterns of other European cities.