NAMSOS (Namdalsavisa): A man in his 20s has recently appeared in Trøndelag district court, where he has had to answer for a number of criminal offences, including against public servants.
At the end of April last year, he threatened two named Nav employees; one supervisor and one case manager. The threats were made in an application for social assistance that was submitted via nav.no.
Money for mobile
In the application, where he asked for money to buy a new mobile phone, he wrote, among other things:I’m f…. not playing and should get what I’m entitled to f… and must have an answer before tomorrow!!!!! and plus the money back payment for clothes, I have to get them paid out tomorrow as I pay my friends for….».
He points out that he has borrowed money from friends – and if the named supervisor does not pay him the money the next day, he will have “problems with his friends”.
– ….then she will kill NN (the supervisor, ed. note) I mean it.
The Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority’s definition of violence and threats
- “Violence and threats” are incidents where employees are physically or verbally attacked in situations related to their work, and which involve an overt or implied threat to their safety, health or well-being.
- “Threat” is a verbal attack or action aimed at harming or intimidating a person.
- “Violence” is any act intended to cause physical or psychological harm to a person. It also includes incidents where the person who harms another person is not aware of or considers the consequences of their action – for example due to intoxication, mental/somatic illness, mental and emotional state or similar.
- “On purpose” is used in this definition to distinguish the action from pure accidents which can also lead to similar damages. It can also be defined as violence when employees experience acts of aggression where extensive damage is done to fixtures and equipment.
The man in his 20s applied a number of times to Nav for financial social assistance. In the period November 2022 to 23 April 2023, he submitted a total of 57 applications for this. The applications were preferably sent digitally.
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Expected very quick responses
He was impatient and expected very quick answers, well within the current case processing deadlines. The caseload from the man was so large that there were therefore several caseworkers to handle the applications.
In Nav, he had one case manager and one supervisor. When the two Nav employees came to work the day after the application with the threats had been sent, they became aware of the content of the application. The man was banned from visiting.
In police questioning, he admitted to having sent the application with the aforementioned content. But when he had to explain himself in court, he refused to do so. The reason was that there were audience members in the courtroom. He left the courtroom, despite the possibility of facilitation from the court.
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“Undoubtedly a threat”
The District Court believes that the statements that he was going to kill the case manager “undoubtedly constitute a threat under the Criminal Code.”
The court has no doubt that he “acted with intent and with the aim” of getting the Nav employee to grant the application for economic social assistance for the purchase of a mobile phone.
30 percent have experienced threats
A report from 2023, prepared by the Directorate of Labor and Welfare and the Municipal Sector Organization (KS) shows that the threat to a Nav employee in Namdalen is not unusual.
In 2020-2021, 30 per cent of Nav employees had experienced threats, harassment, harassment or physical violence from users. The employees at Nav offices and Nav Kontaktsenter are most at risk. At the Nav offices, the employees who work with municipal services are significantly more exposed. Threats made over the phone or digitally are most widespread, while few employees are exposed to physical violence (less than 1 per cent).
It shows extensive mapping work with surveys, reports and, not least, visits to over 30 different units that experience violence and threats in their work.
Summary from the report
Source: Violence and threats against Nav employees – updated knowledge and proposals for measures (report published by the Ministry of Labor and Welfare and KS
– Based on the shares in the survey and the number of employees in Nav, we can roughly estimate that 5,400 employees were exposed to at least one unwanted incident last year, the report states.
About half of the Nav employees who have been exposed to incidents in the past year have only experienced this once, while half have been exposed to it twice or more. At Nav Kontaktsenter, however, it is more common to have been exposed to this more than twice in the past year.
A total of 49 per cent of the employees here have experienced threats on the phone or digital channels – 13 per cent have experienced this once, while 36 per cent have experienced more than two incidents.
– Analyzes show that the more users an employee has contact with, the greater the probability of experiencing one or more incidents. This is an important explanation for the fact that employees at Nav Kontaktsenter are most exposed to threats. They handle incoming calls and chat and usually have contact with a larger number of users per day than employees at Nav offices, they write in the report.
Now the Trøndelag district court has sentenced the man for threatening to kill. In addition, he has been convicted of two cases of theft, one case of document forgery and one case of theft.
– Public preventive considerations weigh heavily in the case of threats against Nav employees. This applies not least to employees who in this case work with financial social assistance and thereby have a particularly prominent position. In order to be able to solve their work tasks of safeguarding the user’s interests in the best possible way, they need special protection. The threats in this case were serious and specifically aimed at killing, writes the court.
Previously convicted
As an aggravating factor, the court emphasizes that the man has previously been convicted, also for matters of the same and similar nature as the one for which he is now convicted.
He has previously been convicted of fraud, drink-driving, driving without a valid driver’s licence, negligent driving, counterfeiting, reckless behaviour, gross theft and negligent theft.
In mitigation, the court emphasizes, among other things, that the case has become old.
The sentence is imprisonment for 45 days, in addition to the previous sentence of five months he was sentenced for in 2023.
Tags: Threatened kill Nav employee application
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