Evil never sleeps.

Day after day, hour after hour, crooks are at work, just as tirelessly fought by the police.

Only spectacular misdeeds cause a stir, we only notice the smaller rip-offs when it is our own purse that is stolen.

But the police also take care of alleged petty crimes and eagerly write reports about them, but very few of them make it into the media.

It's not fair to the police, but also, if you will, to the little crooks.

So let's turn our attention to one of these wallflower reports.

Jorg Thomann

Editor in the “Life” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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The crime took place in Freiberg am Neckar in the late evening of July 16, 2022. The police announced shortly thereafter that, according to a witness at the train station, four strangers shook a snack machine and “apparently stole several objects”.

"Before the police arrived, the quartet of perpetrators left at 11:01 p.m. in the direction of Marbach using a run-in S-Bahn line S4."

"The amount of damage is currently the subject of the investigation." Anyone who can provide relevant information about the crime or the perpetrators is asked to report "due to suspicion of a particularly serious case of theft" at the Federal Police in Stuttgart.

A particularly serious case of theft?

We don't have any relevant information, but we do have a few questions.

Does this kind of thing happen more often?

It's not like we drive to a broken vending machine every day.

From time to time attempts are made either to break them open or to manipulate the output tray by shaking it so that the food falls out.

Are you assuming repeat offenders?

We don't know, we don't have them yet.

For a while there was actually a kind of gang that tried to break into machines, including at several train stations in our area.

But now there hasn't been anything for a long time.

When did the police arrive at the crime scene?

A short time later, but unfortunately the perpetrators got on the S-Bahn.

The police must have been there five minutes later.

This is what you get when public transport arrives on time: the perpetrators have fled, in a public getaway vehicle, possibly even with a 9-euro ticket.

They may have slipped their prey - presumably chocolate bars and other sweets of a comparable size - into jacket and trouser pockets.

Or was one of them so hungry that he took a straight bite?

We keep asking.

The police were on site five minutes after the alarm – that's fast.

Was she near the train station anyway?

It was the state police.

We come from Stuttgart, it took us a bit longer.

But if perpetrators are caught in the act, the state police take over the first attack for us.

How did she find the crime scene?

The machine was only shaken, there was no external damage, no signs of being broken into.

He didn't fly either.

Do you now know anything more about the extent of the damage?

The machine belongs to a certain company, and you just have to ask them how much damage is involved.

They send an employee to inspect the machine.

It is also possible that the shaking inside has caused some defect or something is jammed.