Three people have been killed and several have been injured when, two days in a row, shootings took place inside people’s homes in the Stockholm area.
Max Åkerwall, acting head of the police area in the Stockholm region, says that it is clear that the boundaries have been pushed further in the already ongoing wave of violence. In the last five days, the police have stopped around five to six attacks in the region.
— They sit with petrol cans in vehicles, they have plastic gloves, protective clothing and ignition devices. And we see that they are on their way to addresses that are interesting to us from an intelligence point of view. That’s how close it is, he says.
“Boys Stand in Line”
Often it is young boys from other regions of Sweden who have come to Stockholm to carry out what Max Åkerwall calls “murder commands”.
— Young boys are queuing up to commit this type of crime. It is the filling from below that is so incredibly challenging for us.
In order to turn the situation around, the whole society needs to mobilize, he believes.
— When we detain these young boys and they are transported to an institution, it is often the case that there are no legal grounds for keeping them locked up there.
Max Åkerwall compares it to the police leaving the young perpetrators on the stairs, after which they wander through the property completely sonic, step out through the balcony door and disappear.
Want to see foot shackles
However, if the police had been able to track the escapees, it would have made things much easier, the police chief believes.
“If there are various forms of coercive decisions on the part of the Social Services combined with being in an institution like this, then we might have to consider in the short term whether it should not be combined with an electronic foot shackle or the like,” he says.
— We spend a lot of time and resources on picking up the same people time and time again, where they risk being a perpetrator one day and a crime victim the next.
TT: How much of a difference do you think it would make in the ongoing wave of violence now?
— It would at least limit the possibilities for these people to move freely in society, to take part in plans for the next crime, to move to a particular address and be equipped with weapons and other attributes to then go and carry out a murder plan, says Max Åkerwall.
— I think it would actually make it easier for us to be able to create better control over the current situation.