Sweden’s prime minister on Thursday said that he’s summoned the head of the military to discuss how the armed forces can help police deal with an unprecedented crime wave that has shocked the country with almost daily shootings and bombings.
Getting the military involved in crime-fighting would be a highly unusual step for Sweden, underscoring the severity of the gang violence that has claimed a dozen lives across the country this month, including teenagers and innocent bystanders.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said that he would meet with the armed forces’ supreme commander and the national police commissioner on Friday to explore “how the armed forces can help police in their work against the criminal gangs.”
I agree that the current government is implementing exactly 0 long-term strategies to help deal with the root cause of the problems, like strengthening and financing social services and welfare, healthcare and mental healthcare, schools and social programs, decriminalizing some drugs etc, to curb influx of underage criminals into the gangs and remove some of the economical incentives. The opposition is coming out with good suggestion after good suggestion, and the right-wing (by Swedish standards) government has basically just slashed welfare across the board in practice. They are going for only the hard-on-crime approach, which as far as I know has no real scientific proof of long-term efficacy unless paired with social/community interventions.
However, I think many swedes agree that the police need more resources - particularly people watching possible targets of future bombings and just more eyes on the gangs. We have one of the lowest number of police per capita in Europe, slightly higher than the rest of the Nordic countries tbf, but with much bigger problems with organized crime and violence.
I’m also horrified at this general societal development, but I can see the merit of involving some of the military in more eyes-on-the-ground kinds of operations for a few years until we have more of a grip on the gang situation. I prefer that to visitation zones, harsher punishments and more generalized surveillance of non-suspects being allowed.
But maybe I’m just naïve to the implications.
Yeah, I don’t really disagree fundamentally with any of this apart from the fact that I don’t think involving the military at this point is anywhere near warranted. We’ll have to see what happens I guess, I think it could be mostly saber rattling. “Look how seriously we’re taking this!”.
But more police, and specifically more police on tasks that actually matter and aren’t just being pursued to pad their stats? That’s fine.
Yes, agreed, some of it is probably just bluster to seem like they’re doing something.
However, even if we agree that more police resources are necessary, I don’t know how we should get more of competent, educated police in the short term unless we involve military (who do have some education at least). The last thing I want is for us to rapidly employ new “police” (ordningsvakter) with only weeks or a few months of training - that’s how we get additional problems with US-style police violence on top of the gang violence problems…
Agreed. There are not really any good options here.