Swedish conditions, Gang crime | Swedish conditions in Norway? The police shout a warning

(Fredriksstad Blad): Police station chief Ivar Prestbakken is someone who have been out on a winter night before, as it is called. Nevertheless: This time it is about something much more difficult than standing in the middle of serious accidents or violent incidents. Such things that can be solved with policing experience and cleverness.

For now, it is the police’s resources, ambitions and, not least, the future of good colleagues that is at stake. Prestbakken has been given clear instructions to cut budgets. Around four out of 73 man-years in Fredrikstad will have to go.

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The police have simply become too expensive to operate. At least more expensive than what the Storting, which approves the budgets, likes. So now it’s time for the big chopping axe.

Could the timing have been worse? Hardly. Because there is seriousness out there, more than ever. The police in all cities in central Eastern Norway report the same disturbing development.

There is a need for early and long-term preventive efforts. Nevertheless: This is precisely where the police must now cut resources.

– We must prioritize the tasks we are required to do by law. In plain language, this means that the preventive department is most at risk, says Prestbakken.

There is a larger backdrop to this that is truly disturbing. It is about what we have seen in recent months in Moss, in Drøbak and repeatedly in Oslo. Shooting in the open street, stabbings and car bombs.

And where it concerns a cynical struggle for the drug market, power and prestige.

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Yes, we are about to get what in recent years has been frequently referred to as . In other words, a situation where heavy gang crime dominates – and eventually takes over society.

The claim is not mine, but the police’s. In a press release, the police employees’ own union points to several reasons why Norway is moving at full speed towards Swedish conditions:

1. Negative crime trends.
2. Negative staffing development.
3. Downsizing of the professional environment.
4. Excessive workload and increased sickness absence.
5. Sharpened threat image and increased level of conflict in society.
6. Politicians who explain away.

In our neighboring country Sweden, it is now believed that 62,000 people can be linked to criminal gangs. The Minister of Justice tells about criminals who infiltrate political parties and banks testify to silence. He goes so far as to call it “system-threatening crime”.

And now the professional criminals are expanding towards Norway, among others. We got a brutal reminder of that just before Christmas peace was supposed to descend last year.

Then it happened in our neighboring town of Moss, with a regular execution attempt in the open street. Later, it has been shown that both the shooting victim and the alleged perpetrators are connected to Swedish gang crime.

If a fresh national threat assessment is used as a basis, we do our best to steel ourselves for more of the same. Kripos believes that it is very likely that Swedish gang members will increase their activity in Norway during the year.

• Kripos expects that Swedish actors with significant capital for violence will continue to be active on Norwegian soil in 2024.
• The Swedish-Kurdish Foxtrot network, which is a significant player in Sweden’s drug market, already has connections to several police districts in Norway.
• Swedish drug criminals take on more and more commissions of violence and deprivation of liberty in Norway.

Can a thread be woven back to where I started, about budget cuts and fewer resources for preventive efforts at Fredrikstad police station? Yes and no.

There is of course no automaticity in the fact that all young people who start on a criminal career path end up as serious criminals. So far from it.

But, some will be. And therefore it is undeniably a profound paradox that the police must leave down the effort at the same time as criminal networks are getting a better foothold in Norway.

For the recruitment, it happens precisely among the young.

When a “National operation targeting criminal networks” (OP KN) was announced in Norway five years ago, the importance of to prevent the recruitment of young people into criminal circles highlighted.

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But what is a plan really worth if resources and effort do not follow? There must be reason to ask when you see the cuts that the police in Fredrikstad and other cities in central Eastern Norway have to make.

– When resources become scarcer, we have to prioritize even harder, says police station chief Ivar Prestbakken to Fredriksstad Blad.

At the same time, he points out that youth under the legal age are primarily a municipal responsibility. That is correct, without the situation appearing in any way more reassuring for that reason.

We are talking about a municipality which last school year received 721 non-conformance notices about violence and threats made by children and young people – and where the staff ask if a tragedy has to happen before more money is invested. It seems to be a timely question.