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POLICE

Police caught by speed cameras: ‘All equal before the law’

Police cars, fire engines and ambulances regularly exceed speed limits on Sweden's roads. Many are caught on camera.

Even if the offence is committed while responding to an emergency call a report still has to be filed and an explanation given.

A waste of time and unnecessary administration, according to ambulance staff and police in Linköping, local newspaper Östgöta Correspondenten reports.

“We pass speed cameras several times a day. They are not all always turned on, fortunately, but we get reports of more than five speeding offences per week,” according to Anders Månsson at Östgota police.

Anders Drugge, head of the police unit for automatic traffic safety cameras in Kiruna, argues that it is a case of all being equal before the law.

“We can not have one rule for the general public and another for official vehicles, that would not work,” he said.

POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

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