A website set up by a group claiming to want to expose violent and racist police officers has been threatened with closure.

"/> A website set up by a group claiming to want to expose violent and racist police officers has been threatened with closure.

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POLICE

Ministry seeks ban on police watchdog site

A website set up by a group claiming to want to expose violent and racist police officers has been threatened with closure.

Published: 7 October 2011 14:02 CEST

The site, Copwatch, publishes photos and videos of officers it claims are engaging in inappropriate behaviour or expressing racist views. The policemen concerned can be clearly identified in the pictures.

Images shown on the site include officers drinking alcohol, under the title “police having fun in the barracks”, a policeman who states his membership of a far-right political group on his Facebook page and pictures of others the group claims are violent and racist.

The site has caused anger at the interior ministry as well as with officers and their unions. One policeman has filed an official complaint after he received hunting cartridges in the mail. The officer concerned said he was identified on the Copwatch site. Police unions have also lodged complaints.

The group behind the site has said it is a “collective of citizens who want to fight against police violence with transparency and information.”

Interior minister Claude Guéant has described the site as “completely unacceptable and scandalous.”

A Paris court will consider the case on Wednesday.

twitter.com/matthew_warren

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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.

Published: 5 October 2023 17:11 CEST
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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