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POLICE

Female cop suspected of assaulting Swedish drunk

A Stockholm policewoman is suspected of assault after a witness filmed her beating a drunken man with a baton and setting her dog on him in a violent attack.

Female cop suspected of assaulting Swedish drunk

The Stockholm District Court said on Wednesday that the woman was suspected of assault or professional misconduct.

In the attack, which occurred in central Stockholm and was caught on camera, the woman is seen hitting a drunken man fourteen times with her baton while her dog snaps at him and bites him. She continually tells the man to "lie down", which he ignores, trying instead to fend off the dog and the woman.

Eventually he lies down bleeding while the police officers pacifies the dog and calls for an ambulance.

The policewoman, who is currently on holiday, will be reassigned when she returns to work, according to DN.

The man who is beaten in the video is also suspected of assault, making illegal threats, causing damages, and drug crimes. He was never detained during the incident, which occurred on a Friday night in mid-July.

The video, which was filmed by a passerby and can be seen on Dagens Nyheter, has awoken strong reactions around Sweden.

"I can only say that this film gives reason to suspect that a crime has been committed by the police," Mats Åhlund of the Swedish National Police Crimes Unit (Riksenheten för polismål) told the paper.

"An investigation must be properly made into what happened before and after, but it's crystal clear that there is a reason to suspect a crime."

While some commentators are outraged by what they believe is unnecessary police violence, others have pointed out that the video begins with the policewoman's attack and does not show what the man did to provoke the officer.

TT/The Local/og

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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.

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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