European Central: Malmo Gangs Use Teenagers To Terrorize City
JOHAN NILSSON
On May 23rd of this year a corner store was bombed. Fortunately,there were no fatalities in the blast, but the owner was injured.The owner has impaired hearing and has pain as a result of the blast. The attack also resulted in 4,000 British pounds of damage to the store and also damaged a car parked outside. What is troubling is that a 16-year-old girl is a suspect of committing the crime with two twenty-three-year-old men. The trio set off 12 kilograms of explosives in the explosion. None of the three suspects have confessed, but police gathered evidence from security cameras and mobile data from the suspects’ phones.Sadly this is not an isolated incidence but instead part of a trendin Sweden.
Just over two weeks before this attack, three corner stores were all bombed. It is suspected that the bombing on May 23rd was in revenge for one of the previous bombings. Crime has been rising in Malmo the past several years. In 2019, there were over 50 shootings despite it being difficult to get to legally purchase a firearm in Sweden. First, you must be granted a weapon license from the police. In order to qualify for a weapon license, you must be in good standing and be able to declare what the intended purpose is for having the weapon license. The main two reasons that result in people getting approved for a weapon license is for the purposes of hunting and target practice. For target practice those approved for a weapon license are part of an official association. Due to how strict it is to obtain a weapon license, it is unlikely the shootings are coming from people who legally possess firearms. It is important that the police in Sweden, particularly in Malmo are able to stop the bombings and shootings. While many of the victims killed in the rise in crime are members of gangs, innocent people are also killed. What is known is the rise is crime is likely from gangs selling drugs in Sweden. If Malmo does not successfully control the rise in crime, residents may move away. A suburb that is only 20 minutes by car produced a video encouraging residents to move away.
Besides crime rising, minors have been increasingly involved in other cases in Sweden. The likely explanation of this is because minors involved in crimes no matter how severe serve significantly shorter sentences than if they were adults. This explains why it is suspected that the 16 year-old girl not only bought the explosives, but detonated them. Starting in 1902 minors can be placed under the authority of social services rather than be punished. Sweden has prioritized reforming the criminal system, but it may require changes if this continues. The country is proud that it has closed prisons and has seen a reduction in the number of prisoners. Sweden may have to rethink its strategy, however. Sweden cannot afford to have more minors committing serious crimes such as bombings if gangs continue to exploit the existing loophole. The Swedish Population may have more of a say as well. As it is, the Director-General of the Swedish prison system even acknowledge anger from the Swedish public about some of the reforms he carried out. These reforms may be reversed in the future if Swedish voters continue to increasingly vote for very conservative politicians. These children may be forced by gangs to take part in these crimes and it would make sense that Sweden would be hesitant to place minors in jails for crimes they were coerced in committing, but Sweden needs to find a way to stop crime from occurring.
The populist Swedish Democrat political party is exploiting this problem by pushing its own anti-migrant agenda. The problem for the political party is that there are no official national crime statistics it can use to back any claims about crimes being committed by migrants. This is because Sweden does not record the ethnicity or race of those who commit crimes. This means the Swedish Democrats can only use negative stereotypes to try to rally support rather than data. They can however point at individual cases in the absence of statistical trends. For example, in the bombing on May 23rd, all three suspects are Somali.
For the Swedish Democrats, despite angering people with internationally with what critics consider racist discord, it has been working for them in elections. The party sees more electoral success with each election. This success can be partially explained by Jimmie Åkesson working diligently to change the perception of the party after becoming leader of the Swedish Democrats in 2005. He expelled neo-Nazis and has cut associations with racist organizations. To date other political parties however have been successful with creating coalitions that have excluded the Swedish Democrats limiting their ability to have political power on the national stage.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Swedes believe the rise incrime due to the significant economic problems that migrants face.
