Published: Less than 20 min ago
The Södertälje police have managed to prevent at least five murders since last autumn, says the intelligence leader to P4 Stockholm.
There are many indications that it is about a total of up to twelve events.
At the end of September last year, a man with a gunshot wound appeared at the emergency room in Södertälje, shortly after the police were alerted to shootings in the Saltskog district. The police discovered bullet holes in several cars and in the glass panes of a room where children had a disco.
During the weeks that followed, the ones that would later be called the city’s black weeks, there were four more shootings in Södertälje. Three people were shot and two were shot dead.
Could be dozens
Since then, the police have prevented at least five murders, among other things by having a lot of police out on the streets and through targeted intelligence work. This is what intelligence leader Rickard Holtz tells P4 Stockholm.
– In any case, there are five or six established incidents where we know we have prevented murder. But it is probably about a dozen or so where we have fairly clear indications that this has been the case, he says to the radio.
Much of the work involves mapping and analyzing the criminal environment, and then deploying reconnaissance efforts against the individuals the police call violent. Several of them have been known to the police for several years, but the police also discover new, young potential shooters who they keep an eye on together with social services.
Young offenders
Also in the rest of the Stockholm region, people in their early teens move around in criminal environments.
In the wave of violence that swept the capital region, with shootings and explosions, many of both the victims and the perpetrators are under 18.
The spiral of violence began on Christmas Day when a known gang criminal was shot to death in Rinkeby. Since then, around thirty violent crimes have occurred, in what according to the police has its basis in three parallel gang conflicts. Several of those arrested during this period are under the age of 15.