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Man shot in Malmö as gang war intensifies

A 24-year-old man with ties to Malmö's criminal underworld was shot and injured in the southern part of the city on Saturday evening as police fear a fresh escalation of violence.

Published: 18 April 2010 09:56 CEST
Man shot in Malmö as gang war intensifies

His condition was reported to be stable following an operation on Saturday night to treat injuries to his stomach and arm.

The known gangster was seriously injured after he was struck by two shots on a street in Söderkulla, an area that is home to members of two of Malmö’s most violent gangs, the so-called M-wing and K-wing (M-falangen, K-falangen).

“Seven or eight shots were fired. Two connected,” police spokesman Lennart Hornemark told news agency TT.

“We’re currently looking for a cyclist believed to have witnessed the incident.”

Police in Malmö believe the shooting is part of the city’s ongoing gang war. The 24-year-old was released from prison last month after serving time for weapons offences and issuing illegal threats.

Police interviewed witnesses and residents in the area after the attack but had not identified any suspects by Sunday morning.

Friends of the 24-year-old said the attacker or attackers had fled the scene in a dark hatchback car, which almost collided with a smaller vehicle immediately after the shooting. Police said they were seeking to establish contact with the driver of the smaller car.

The 24-year-old is believed to be a key member of the M-wing, a gang thought by police to be an independent cell within a larger international criminal network. Police intelligence has shown that the group’s leaders have strong ties to Serbia, where they own properties and businesses, south Sweden daily Sydsvenskan reports.

One of the two who headed the gang was shot dead in August last year in a killing linked to the rival K-wing. The victim was 23 years old.

The war between the gangs was ratcheted up another notch in late January when the older brother of the K-wing’s 22-year-old leader was shot dead on Stortorget in central Malmö. A number of members of the K-wing were involved in high profile disturbances in the city’s Rosengård district in 2008 and 2009, Sydsvenskan reports.

The leader of the M-wing was released from custody on Thursday in connection with the Stortorget killing.

His counterpart in the K-wing was released from prison in Västervik the previous day following a short sentence for weapons offences, Sydsvenskan reports.

Police had expressed fears prior to Saturday’s attack that a fresh bout of violence was likely after the release of the two leaders.

“We’ve spoken to people in both camps and they maintain there isn’t a risk of renewed fighting but we don’t believe that,” a police gang expert told Sydsvenskan.

SHOOTINGS

US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success

The US criminologist behind the anti-gang strategy designed to reduce the number of shootings and explosions in Malmö has credited the city and its police for the "utterly pragmatic, very professional, very focused" way they have put his ideas into practice.

Published: 8 March 2021 16:12 CET
US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success
Johan Nilsson/TT

In an online seminar with Malmö mayor Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said implementing his Group Violence Intervention (GVI) strategy had gone extremely smoothly in the city.

“What really stands out about the Malmö experience is contrary to most of the places we work,” he said. “They made their own assessment of their situation on the ground, they looked at the intervention logic, they decided it made sense, and then, in a very rapid, focused and business-like fashion, they figured out how to do the work.”

He said that this contrasted with police and other authorities in most cities who attempt to implement the strategy, who tend to end up “dragging their feet”, “having huge amounts of political infighting”, and coming up with reasons why their city is too different from other cities where the strategy has been a success.

Malmö’s Sluta Skjut (Stop Shooting) pilot scheme was extended to a three-year programme this January, after its launch in 2018 coincided with a reduction in the number of shootings and explosions in the city.

“We think it’s a good medicine for Malmö for breaking the negative trend that we had,” Malmö police chief Stefan Sintéus said, pointing to the fall from 65 shootings in 2017 to 20 in 2020, and in explosions from 62 in 2017 to 17 in 2020.

A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of shootings from 2017 to 2020. Graph: Malmö Police
A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of explosions in the city between 2017 and 2020. Graph: Malmö Police

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In their second evaluation of the programme, published last month, Anna-Karin Ivert, Caroline Mellgren, and Karin Svanberg, three criminologists from Malmö University, reported that violent crime had declined significantly since the program came into force, and said that it was possible that the Sluta Skjut program was partly responsible, although it was difficult to judge exactly to what extent. 

The number of shootings had already started to decline before the scheme was launched, and in November 2019, Sweden’s national police launched Operation Rimfrost, a six-month crackdown on gang crime, which saw Malmö police reinforced by officers from across Sweden.

But Kennedy said he had “very little sympathy” for criminologists critical of the police’s decision to launch such a massive operation at the same time as Sluta Skjut, making it near impossible to evaluate the programme.

“Evaluation is there to improve public policy, public policy is not there to provide the basis for for sophisticated evaluation methodology,” he argued.

“When people with jobs to do, feel that they need to do things in the name of public safety, they should follow their professional, legal and moral judgement. Not doing something to save lives, because it’s going to create evaluation issues, I think, is simply privileging social science in a way that it doesn’t deserve.”

US criminologist David Kennedy partaking in the meeting. Photo: Richard Orange

Sluta Skjut has been based around so-called ‘call-ins’, in which known gang members on probation are asked to attend meetings, where law enforcement officials warn them that if shootings and explosions continue, they and the groups around them will be subject to intense focus from police.

At the same time, social workers and other actors in civil society offer help in leaving gang life.

Of the 250-300 young men who have been involved in the project, about 40 have been sent to prison, while 49 have joined Malmö’s ‘defector’ programme, which helps individuals leave gangs.

Kennedy warned not to focus too much on the number of those involved in the scheme who start to work with social services on leaving gang life.

“What we find in in practice is that most of the impact of this approach doesn’t come either because people go to prison or because they take services and leave gang life,” he said.

“Most of the impact comes from people simply putting their guns down and no longer being violent.”

“We think of the options as continuing to be extremely dangerous, or completely turning one’s life around. That’s not realistic in practice. Most of us don’t change that dramatically ever in our lives.”

He stressed the importance of informal social control in his method, reaching those who gang members love and respect, and encouraging them to put pressure on gang members to abstain from gun violence.

“We all care more about our mothers than we care about the police, and it turns out that if you can find the guy that this very high risk, very dangerous person respects – literally, you know, little old ladies will go up to him and get his attention and tell him to behave himself. And he will.”

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