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Shooting injures three in Copenhagen suburb

Police are trying to determine if a shooting incident that left three wounded is gang-related but say that the victims are "not particularly communicative".

Published: 6 January 2015 09:15 CET
Shooting injures three in Copenhagen suburb
Photo: Colourbox
Three young men were shot and injured Monday night in the western Copenhagen suburbs, police said. 
 
According to police, there were five men in a car that was shot at by an unknown assailant at an intersection in Ballerup just before 11pm on Monday. Three of the men were hit and were taken to Herlev Hospital. 
 
Two of the shooting victims were later released from hospital, while the third is expected to undergo a procedure on Tuesday. According to police, none of the victims’ injuries were life-threatening. 
 
Police did not immediately speculate on motive but said they were looking in to whether it was gang-related. 
 
 
“We don’t yet have personal information on the three men so we haven’t had the opportunity to research whether they have connections to gangs or biker groups. The injured parties have thus far not been particularly communicative,” Steffen Østergaard of Copenhagen Vestegn Police told Ritzau shortly after 12am on Tuesday
 
Police said that the two men who were in the vehicle but not hit were questioned and released.  
 
Ballerup is located in Copenhagen’s Vestegn area, a collection of western suburbs that according to figures from Statistics Denmark have the highest rates of violent crime in Denmark. 
 

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CRIME

Danish government backs removing children from gang-connected families

Denmark’s government wants authorities to be able to move children out of families in which parents are gang members and is likely to formalise the measure in parliament.

Published: 9 April 2024 13:38 CEST
Danish government backs removing children from gang-connected families

The justice spokesperson with senior coalition partner the Social Democrats, Bjørn Brandenborg, told regional media TV2 Fyn that he wants authorities to have the power to remove children from their families in certain circumstances where the parents are gang members.

Brandenborg’s comments came on Monday, after Odense Municipality said it had spent 226 million kroner since 2009 on social services for eight specific families with gang connections.

“There is simply a need for us to give the authorities full backing and power to forcibly remove children early so we break the food chain and the children don’t become part of gang circles,” he said.

The measure will be voted on in parliament “within a few weeks”, he said.

An earlier agreement on anti-gang crime measures, which was announced by the government last November, includes provisions for measures of this nature, Brandenborg later confirmed to newswire Ritzau.

“Information [confirming] that close family members of a child or young person have been convicted for gang crime must be included as a significant and element in the municipality’s assessment” of whether an intervention is justified, the agreement states according to Ritzau.

The relevant part of November’s political agreement is expected to be voted on in parliament this month.

READ ALSO: Denmark cracks down on gang crime with extensive new agreement

Last year, Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told political media Altinget that family relations to a gang member could be a parameter used by authorities when assessing whether a child should be forcibly removed from parents.

In the May 2023 interview, Hummelgaard called the measure a “hard and far-reaching measure”.

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