Sweden’s prime minister on Thursday said that he’s summoned the head of the military to discuss how the armed forces can help police deal with an unprecedented crime wave that has shocked the country with almost daily shootings and bombings.
Getting the military involved in crime-fighting would be a highly unusual step for Sweden, underscoring the severity of the gang violence that has claimed a dozen lives across the country this month, including teenagers and innocent bystanders.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said that he would meet with the armed forces’ supreme commander and the national police commissioner on Friday to explore “how the armed forces can help police in their work against the criminal gangs.”
I see the Swedish experiment is going just fine
This was re-posted to the same community, 13 hours later, by the same person.
I prefer actual cross-posts over detached reposts, but still hope this was a mistake. It splits the comment sections.
And the authoritarians keep moving up their positions.
The debate over here is fucking crazy, the post-fascist backed government is sneering at any proposed solution with any nuance or suggested preventative measures included. It’s all fucking military intervention, insane deregulation of policing, surveillance, harsher punishments, regressive drug policy, and anti immigration populism.
Do we have an uptick in violence because of a very specific ongoing gang conflict, yes. But Jesus Christ, not anywhere near the level that would excuse anything close to this.
I agree that the current government is implementing exactly 0 long-term strategies to help deal with the root cause of the problems, like strengthening and financing social services and welfare, healthcare and mental healthcare, schools and social programs, decriminalizing some drugs etc, to curb influx of underage criminals into the gangs and remove some of the economical incentives. The opposition is coming out with good suggestion after good suggestion, and the right-wing (by Swedish standards) government has basically just slashed welfare across the board in practice. They are going for only the hard-on-crime approach, which as far as I know has no real scientific proof of long-term efficacy unless paired with social/community interventions.
However, I think many swedes agree that the police need more resources - particularly people watching possible targets of future bombings and just more eyes on the gangs. We have one of the lowest number of police per capita in Europe, slightly higher than the rest of the Nordic countries tbf, but with much bigger problems with organized crime and violence.
I’m also horrified at this general societal development, but I can see the merit of involving some of the military in more eyes-on-the-ground kinds of operations for a few years until we have more of a grip on the gang situation. I prefer that to visitation zones, harsher punishments and more generalized surveillance of non-suspects being allowed.
But maybe I’m just naïve to the implications.
Yeah, I don’t really disagree fundamentally with any of this apart from the fact that I don’t think involving the military at this point is anywhere near warranted. We’ll have to see what happens I guess, I think it could be mostly saber rattling. “Look how seriously we’re taking this!”.
But more police, and specifically more police on tasks that actually matter and aren’t just being pursued to pad their stats? That’s fine.
Yes, agreed, some of it is probably just bluster to seem like they’re doing something.
However, even if we agree that more police resources are necessary, I don’t know how we should get more of competent, educated police in the short term unless we involve military (who do have some education at least). The last thing I want is for us to rapidly employ new “police” (ordningsvakter) with only weeks or a few months of training - that’s how we get additional problems with US-style police violence on top of the gang violence problems…
I was going to stop at americanized policing but I pushed for one more sentence.
America has the worst gang violence in the “western” world. Their methods are proven not to work.
You are wrong
America has the worst gang violence by western standards because of failed social policies. Not its policing, which is not helping for sure admittedly.
Sweden has the some of the worst gang violence in Northern Europe now, yet has excellent social policies. Which aren’t exactly shrinking? So why is the gang violence getting worse?
Because there is money to be made. And officer banan is not equipped to deal with someone from either a multi national crime family, or a middle eastern militia using sweden as a training ground.
Sometimes cops need a Damm pansarvagn and if you disagree that’s OK, I wish they didn’t either.
As someone from the Northeast US that has lived here for the better part of 4 decades, people that live in gated communities are usually either retirees or twats scared of their own shadows.
Thank you for your input! It has been very useful, honestly you’re not wrong, there is alot of older folk in the neighborhood. That and families with kids.
This problem has been created by hyper-racist, hyper-femenist, virtue signaling lefties who honestly believed that importing half a million illiterate, ignorant, idiots. Without language or job training. Was a good idea
TIL Fredrik “Öppna Era Hjärtan” Reinfeldt is a virtual signaling leftist?
It’s the typical Moderaterna playbook: increase load on the public services, and do a lot more privatisering to make it more “effective” (and line their pockets), as well as wage dumping for those few who were able to work well. As stuff started to get worse, they lose mandate. But new mandate can’t clean up their problems very easily (and are too incompetent to do so), and so stuff keeps getting worse. People get tired, and they have awful memory, so they give power back to those who started the problem – and suddenly they’re interested in their “solutions” that lead to these problems in the first place and give up any freedoms left.
But keep pretending S started the problem. Their only fault was being too incompetent to fix integration and such from day 1.
That is my point though, “Their only fault was being too incompetent to fix integration and such from day 1”
Yeah, it was the Modraterna, who I absolutley consider to be “lefties” Who started this entire mess way back when, and “öppna era hjärtan” was a marvelous political power play where the American style “corporate socialist democracy” idk, crushed the more traditional communist leaning Scandinavian Socialism*; admit to being kinda racist and very culturally xenophobic, or import almost a million people with zero cultural ties to you.
And they are absolutley virtue signaling pansies imo. Just because I consider a moderate party in Sweden lefties and you do not, does not mean I belive S started the problem, S and VP or whatever the f they are called now had my respect before they absolutley bought the most obvious political move The average svennebannan has lost faith in the system, the gang related välfärdsfusk is going to overehelm, not literally, but emotionally and sensationally overwhelm hen. And I really do believe that.
The current SD is nothing to what it used to be, the combined efforts of both the parties I described earlier* declawed and removed any actually effective tools the party could have brought to the table other than “it was better in the 70-90s, and we don’t like all these brown/black people”
Everyone hates to hear it but actual social nationalistic/democratic parties are going to become the mainstream more and more as the counter to the giant blob of grey that is the current swedish political landscape. The mass import of low cost different colored labor killed solidarity and everything else will soon follow.
Then say something to counter my argument? Or just leave a commet, say I’m racist, and leave. Very mature!
Law enforcement should not be militarized. Sweden just copying America’s mistakes.
Uh, America doesn’t mobilize the fucking army when a handful of gang members shoot each other.
No, the military has rules of engagement and accountability, when they shoot the wrong person they go to Leavenworth, not paid vacation.
Meh, this military stuff is such an exaggeration. It’s mainly about politicians wanting to look like they are strong and doing stuff.
The military are by law allowed to carry out some tasks the police force can. The main example that has been brought up, is to guard buildings of importance. They also have other skills when it comes to technology, and could help the police with knowledge there. That’s the gist of it.
Would not call that copy anyone’s mistakes at all to be honest.
Bear with me for a second. I am going to agree and disagree with you a bit.
While our law enforcement has more than its share of problems, I can’t really think of any instances where it was militarized. Believe me, I am absolutely not a fan of police overreach or some of the idiot, power hungry cops that are out there.
There were some cases where different police agencies did receive surplus military equipment, for whatever reason. Weird, sure. Militarized, not quite. One or two armored personnel carriers does not make a military out of a police department.
We do have the national guard, and they have come in handy a few times. When the US has riots, we tend to have them on a fairly grand scale. It takes some serious manpower to manage them and local police simply don’t have the resources. (1967: 12th Street riots; 82nd and 101st Airborne had to be called in after the National Guard)
Personally, I have been in ordered to shelter in place a couple of times when I lived in the D.C. area when SWAT had to lock down a block or two. Honestly, given the circumstances, I am quite glad that they had the equipment they had. The US has some really nasty places, for sure.
Should the a military be deployed because of rampant gang violence? Sure, if the manpower is needed and it’s for a short time. However, it absolutely should bring laser focus on the fact that these gangs weren’t disolved properly to begin with. If the government is being forced to apply controls to the entire population, there is something seriously wrong.
So, in short, the police shouldn’t be militarized themselves, but sometimes having additional manpower on standby can be a good thing.
It can go absolutely overboard and I think we can look at the instability in Africa right now to prove that.
All of this applies to the US. US law enforcement hasn’t been militarised since Reconstruction in the 1870s. When people say “militarised police”, they mean armored cars that can stop up to .308 rounds and carrying .223 rifles, both things that civilians can legally purchase. There is no police department in the US that has actual military equipment (outside of Coast Guard and DOD).
In Germany, the military cannot be deployed to use force inside Germany’s borders in peacetime. This is part of the constitution. The military must not be used as a domestic instrument of power. You can guess where this is coming from. As such I always view it quite critically when other countries do this, because there is definitely a danger to it.
Police in America: Poopy Diaper Police in other developed countries: Fresh Diaper
As ACAB as I am, at least the units they seem they will deploy have more than a daycamps worth of training. The problem with militarized forces in these situations is it can aggravate it further if not handled properly.
I’m looking at you 1985 Phillidalphia MOVE standoff. Even though they weren’t a ‘gang’ but just defying the law together in a non-threatening way; the police took to just bombing the whole city block.
When you say they should focus on the dissolving of the gangs is exactly correct. Bringing force en masse to combat situational instances won’t stop the problem from growing, you need to strategically remove the kingpins quickly to have the lower echelon fall apart. This also in turn with leaneancy on potential criminal whistleblowers, so those associated already have a ‘scapegoat’ to get out of that environment.
I could be totally wrong though, this is all based off my perceptions as a Midwest American. I just assume the offenders are members of the same community.
