With the 2006 World Ice-hockey Championship underway in the Riga, the police has to deal with more foreigners, who have broken rules themselves or fallen prey to thieves, Baltic News Service reported. Latvian National Police spokeswoman Ieva Zvidre said that on Friday [May 12] the police had taken to a sobering house two very drunken Finnish people.
Overall, the police fined 39 people, including four foreigners, for various administrative offenses and drew up eight protocols for administrative charges, half of them concerning illegal use of alcohol in public places.
The police spokeswoman added that several foreigners had fallen prey to thieves on May 12. A Czech citizen lost his cellular phone that he had left in his car, a digital photo camera was stolen from a Finn in a restaurant, and an Italian man discovered that his passport and money were missing from his hotel room.
The police are investigating those cases, said Zvidre.
The Latvian police have stepped up patrols in the city, which is full of ice-hockey fans, both local and foreign.
