The protective measure was put in place on Saturday night outside police stations in the troubled district of Rosengård, where an explosive device was detonated last night, and in Sällerupsvägen, where a police car was blown up in December.
“The police in Malmö are currently doing quite a lot of operations against professional criminals,” said Calle Persson, press officer for the police in southern Sweden.
“We know from prior work of this kind that some criminals tend to carry out vengeance attacks. It’s also a statement in some way: we want to show who’s in charge.”
He said that police had in the last week launched several raids on professional criminals on the city, and had further operations planned for the coming week.
In a press conference last month, Malmö police chief Stefan Sinteus argued that the explosive device detonated outside Rosengård police station had probably come in response to a police crack down on criminal groups.
“We think what happened was a response from criminals,” he said. “It shows that the work and pressure we're putting on the criminals means we can unfortunately expect things like this.”
Rosengård, in southern Malmö, is one of 61 areas across Sweden considered to be ‘vulnerable', and defined as “a geographically defined area characterized by a low socio-economic status where criminals have an impact on the local community”.
On December 29th a police car parked outside a police station in central Malmö was damaged in an explosion. A 22-year-old man apprehended shortly after the incident remains in custody.
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