Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

MANGS

Sweden’s ‘racist sniper’ felled for further crimes

Convicted murderer Peter Mangs had his attempt to overturn his life sentence quashed on Thursday by a local appeals court, which also found him guilty of an additional three attempted murders.

Published: 25 April 2013 11:08 CEST
Sweden's 'racist sniper' felled for further crimes

Mangs was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for two murders and five attempted murders. The Malmö district court (tingsrätten) was not unanimous in its decision, with one lay judge stating Mangs should only be convicted of one murder.

He was eventually acquitted of several charges, including a third murder, five attempted murders, and one conspiracy to commit murder charge.

On Thursday, however, the Malmö appeals court (hovrätten) not only denied his appeal, but convicted him of another three attempted murders.

After Mangs’ arrest in 2010, Swedish police tried to tie him to several more attacks but inconclusive forensic evidence stood in their way. It lead to the prosecutor having to drop several charges against him even before the trial got off the ground.

The high-profile court case put an end to what Malmö residents called a period of terror as an unknown gunman targeted mostly foreign-born victims in the southern city with a Glock 19 pistol.

In the initial district court trial, the prosecutor said that Mangs had consulted Swedish psychiatric services in 2003, admitting that he was “easily insulted” and had an “interest in death”.

The police, meanwhile, found Natural Born Killers and American Psycho in his DVD collection, alongside a copy of the book “Lasermannen”, which examines the actions of a sniper who targeted immigrants in and around Stockholm during the early nineties.

Mangs, his slight frame draped in an over-size white shirt throughout much of the first trial, appeared disengaged throughout much of the court proceedings.

After being sentenced, Mangs, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, decided to appeal. He has always maintained his innocence, but admitted to some lesser accounts of vandalism – after having shot at street signs.

The case against him has from the start been built on forensic evidence, focusing on bullet shards, empty casings, and matching evidence to the barrel of his gun. Neither DNA nor fingerprints were ever found.

Two witnesses from Mangs’ social circle, however, and testimony from a psychologist in touch with him during his detention before the trial, told the prosecutor that Mangs had confessed to the crimes.

TT/The Local/at

Follow The Local on Twitter

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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

READ ALSO: 

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.”

SHOW COMMENTS