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CRIME

27-year-old sentenced for ‘liquidation’ of Danish police officer

A court in Denmark has given a prison sentence to a man who shot dead a police officer in December last year.

Published: 15 September 2017 17:36 CEST
27-year-old sentenced for 'liquidation' of Danish police officer
Police at the scene of the shooting on December 6th 2016. Photo: Sarah Christine Nørgaard/Scanpix

Jesper Jul, a police dog handler, died of his injuries the day after he was shot in the head at close range on December 6th 2016.

27-year-old Mikkel Starsø Renard shot Jul, 43, at the entrance to the Albertslund police station in Copenhagen shortly after he had arrived for work, reports news agency Ritzau.

He was stood with his police dog at the time of the shooting.

Glostrup Court has now given an unlimited custodial sentence to the 27-year-old culprit.

This type of sentence, known in Danish as a forvaringsdom, is given to individuals considered to be a danger to others having committed serious crimes.

A psychiatric assessment read to the court recommended this type of sentence, stating that Renard was a danger to the life or health of others, according to the report.

“It is particularly serious if a policeman has been killed, as is the case in this instance,” presiding judge Katrine Eriksen said according Ritzau.

“It is a cynical, almost liquidation of a completely random police officer, who was facing in the opposite direction and was shot down,” she added.

Frustration over being denied permission to carry a weapon outside of a shooting club formed part of the motive for the murder.

Although the shot hit the officer in the head, Renard claimed during the trial that he had aimed for his chest.

The court found this version events to be improbable, accepting the view that the attack was planned.

Renard stole a pistol from the Rødovre Skytteforening shooting club the night before the shooting, reports Ritzau.

The same weapon was used to shoot Jul.

The theft of the weapon will also form part of the custodial sentence given to Renard.

Renard has appealed against the court’s decision and seeks acquittal, his defence lawyer told Ritzau.

READ ALSO: Prison warden 'shot three times' by masked man

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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