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CRIME

Shooting of two young children puts spotlight on gang crime in Sweden

After two young children were injured in a shooting near Stockholm at the weekend, Sweden is again reckoning with a gun violence problem that has got worse in recent years.

Published: 19 July 2021 16:50 CEST
Shooting of two young children puts spotlight on gang crime in Sweden
Police at the scene of a potentially gang-related shooting near Stockholm, where two young children were hurt. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

The children, aged five and six, were injured in a shooting in the Huddinge suburb south of Stockholm on Saturday. 

They were taken to hospital, though police said the injuries were not life-threatening and the children were not thought to have been the intended targets. 

“It is awful, a reckless act of violence. These gangs show no empathy,” Interior Minister Mikael Damberg told the TT newswire, in reference to police comments that some of the nine people being held in connection to the Huddinge shooting had links to organised crime.

“This is not something we should have to get used to in Sweden. I understand that people are angry and feel frightened,” the minister said.

This would not be the first time a child bystander was the victim of gang violence; in summer 2020, a 12-year-old girl was killed in a drive-by shooting in Botkyrka, also south of Stockholm.

And last week, a man was shot dead in Huddinge at a spot where children were playing nearby. Deputy regional police chief Palle Nilsson said that he could not confirm whether there was a link between the two recent incidents.

“I am not going to go into [possible] connections, but what we can see over the last year is that these shootings are taking place at times that increase the risk for third parties, when people show total recklessness or indifference to someone else being hit,” said Nilsson.

He added: “It is usually about young men, often with a [mental health] diagnosis and drug problems [who are the perpetrators]. They are very bad at handling weapons. They are afraid in the situation. This increases the risk that someone else will be affected.”

More on this story:

So just how severe is the problem? Sweden overall has relatively low levels of crime and homicide both when comparing to other countries and compared to historical levels in Sweden. But a declining national trend in lethal violence came to an end in 2012, crime statistics show, and since then fatal shootings in particular have been on the rise.

While Europe as a whole, and most countries within it, have seen a reduction in both deadly violence and deadly shootings, Sweden is an outlier, with a clear steady rise in fatal shootings since 2005.

Most of the fatal shootings (80 percent), according to the National Council on Crime Prevention (Brå), are linked to organised gang crime. That proportion has risen from 30 to 50 percent in the early 2000s and less than 20 percent in the 1990s, and it is high compared to other European countries.

In the first six months of 2021, police statistics show that 13 people were killed and 11 injured in a total of 54 shootings in Stockholm, following a record high for shootings in 2020.

It is the capital region that has driven the increase in shootings over recent years. That's a change from a few years ago, when Malmö and the surrounding area (the southern police region) saw shootings at a similar level to Stockholm. By the end of June this year, the southern region had reported 21 shootings and only one death.

The southern region has worked intensively on anti-gang crime initiatives in recent years, including a US-influenced programme called Sluta Skjut (Stop Shooting) which has been partly credited with the improvement. The other major city region of Gothenburg has also seen low numbers of shootings and a positive downward trend.

Gothenburg and the western police region have seen 22 shootings in the first six months of 2021, resulting in two deaths. One of those was a police officer shot dead in the suburb of Biskopsgården where he was working as part of a patrol aimed at boosting security in the area, and believed to have been hit by accident.

As well as Damberg, leaders of Sweden's other political parties were quick to speak out on the problem of gun violence this week.

The legal policy spokesperson for the Moderate Party, Johan Forsell, has called for several policy changes, including a doubling of sentences where crimes are committed in a gang-related context. The party has previously set out its own 10-point gang crime programme, including introducing police stop-and-search zones for example.

Beyond the local Sluta Skjut programmes, which focus on speaking directly to criminal youth and offering them support to leave the gang environment, Sweden has also tightened sentences and laws relating to gang crime in recent years. These has meant giving police increased powers to carry out searches of suspects' homes and to read encrypted communications on suspects' devices, as well as tougher requirements for weapons licences.

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POLICE

Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

A new report in Dagens Nyheter has revealed over 514 suspected leaks of sensitive information from at least 30 members of the police force to criminals since 2018. Here's what we know so far.

Published: 30 April 2024 12:28 CEST
Updated: 30 April 2024 15:45 CEST
Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

What’s happened?

According to an investigative report by newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), multiple gang members have infiltrated the police force by, for example, dating police employees, or using family connections to gain access to sensitive information about ongoing cases.

The first article in DN’s series focuses on a woman the newspaper calls Elin, who met a man, Jonas (not his real name), on a dating app when she had one year left of her police education. She falls in love, but his only goal with the relationship is to get a source within the police force which he can use for access to secret information.

Over the course of four years until she was caught, she made multiple illegal searches in the police register for Jonas, his associates and enemies, as well as providing him with information on ongoing investigations against him.

Other cases investigated by the newspaper include a border guard who sold classified information to gangs, a police officer who leaked information to what DN describes as “one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals” and an investigator who was dating a man she was investigating, who she shared screenshots of sensitive information with.

In another case, the police received a tip-off that information was being leaked to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. It was discovered that a group of five alarm operators had made an unusually high number of searches for members of the Hells Angels, who were later discovered to have connections with the gang that they had lied about during their background checks.

What have the consequences of these leaks been?

In some cases, the leaks preceded revenge attacks on enemies of the gang member involved in the relationship. In other cases, the gang members’ enemies disappeared or were murdered.

Some of the people from the police force involved in the leaks were sentenced to fines for illegal data access or breaches of professional secrecy, while the evidence against others was not sufficient to prosecute. 

At least 30 employees had for different reasons been considered “security risks” and either resigned or were forced to quit, the newspaper reported, with over 514 suspected leaks taking place from police to criminals since 2018.

How do criminals find police officers?

According to DN, they look for things that can be used as blackmail, like police officers who buy drugs, or set “honey traps”, like the one used against Elin, where they meet police officers or students on dating apps and start a relationship.

“You take Tinder, for example, and set your search radius so the police school is in the centre. When you get a match, it’s easy to check if it’s a student, through class lists or how they present themselves on social media. They’re proud of their line of work,” Jonas told DN.

They might also use their family connections to put pressure on relatives who work in the police force.

Why is this important?

It’s important because Sweden has seen a rise in gang-related violence in recent years, with a surge in shootings and bombings as gangs fight for control over different drug markets.

Swedes also have a high level of trust in the police force – 72 percent according to a 2024 study by Medieakademin, topping the list of state authorities, with a higher level of trust than universities, healthcare, the courts and even the Swedish church. This was five percent higher than in 2023.

Although the vast majority of police officers do not leak information to criminal networks, Sweden does not have a history of organised crime infiltrating the police force, so officials are keeping a close eye on these leaks to make sure they don’t become more common.

On April 29th, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told TT newswire that the leaks were “very serious”, potentially putting trust in the police force at risk.

“There are many great risks and one is that trust in police declines, that people get the idea that mafia-like methods are used to infiltrate law enforcement,” he said, before adding that he was unable to say whether it constituted a threat to national security or not purely based on the initial DN article.

“But the mere suspicion of these types of connections are damaging,” he told the newswire.

What happens now?

Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer told DN that he planned to call a meeting with police leadership about the reports, which he described as “extremely serious”.

“[At that meeting] we will consider the need for further measures,” he said.

“Leaking sensitive information to criminals is against the law and can have very damaging consequences for the work of the police force,” Strömmer told DN, adding that it could undermine trust in the police and “damage democracy”.

Last summer, the government increased the penalty for breaching professional secrecy, and a special investigator was tasked with looking at a potential reform of the rules on corruption and professional misconduct in February – the Crime Prevention Council is also involved in that investigation, where it has been asked to provide information on how gangs use government employees.

“Protecting the integrity of the justice system against infiltration and other security threats is a central part of the new national strategy against organised crime that the government decided on earlier this year, and it is given the highest priority in our assignments to the authorities,” Strömmer told the newspaper.

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