Some teenage boys move restlessly back and forth in Malmparken, Sollentuna’s lush oasis where fountains are buzzing and preschool children ride the slide. Hidden among bushes and trees is drug trafficking, quick handshakes where small plastic bags change hands.
At the police station next door, Lennart Karlsson follows the boys’ movements via the police cameras that are placed on the streets and squares. After almost 30 years as a drug cop, he recognizes the pattern. The movements, the flickering glances.
Via the radio, he informs his colleagues out there that something is going on. The plainclothes police are getting ready.
Just over 1,200 network criminals in Sweden is under 18 years of age, according to a survey conducted by the Police Authority at the end of last year. Some have already advanced up the hierarchy, others belong to the tail and are on their way in. It’s about young people – including children – who grow up with gang crime around the corner.
In Sollentuna, there is the Tureberg network, which is a largely family-based, criminal group consisting of about thirty people aged 16 to 40, according to the police. And the community is no bigger than meeting them on the way to the commuter train, the shop, or here in Malmparken. In fact, the gang does not even have to actively recruit. It is rather a process of socialization where norms and values are transferred. An everyday life where young boys are daily confronted with the choice to go to school, or to the older boys who withdraw fast cash and show off in their designer clothes and cars. Bands that offer pizza and have fun with the younger ones and offer a community.
Malmparken surrounded by ten high-rise buildings built in the 60s as a more luxurious variant of the million program. There was a separate reception where families could book trips, restaurant visits and cleaning. 30 years later, the chairman of the municipal board stated that it did not turn out as planned. Malmvägen had “certain features of the ghetto, especially the ethnic segregation”, she said in a TV interview.
According to the police, the situation worsened when rental apartments were later sold out and criminals took over several apartments to use them as a base.
Police officer Pär Carlsson describes how crime finds its way into ordinary people’s lives and affects them.
– In the pram rooms, criminals cut up the lining in the seat and hide their goods. When the mother comes to pick up her pram, a gangster has turned it into a drug center. But the residents do not dare to say anything, it is a subtle threat that has been normalized. Imagine having to endure such things in your own residential area. Many do not even know how to make a police report.
Another example is restaurant owners who happen to have gang criminals come in and eat, calm and tidy. But when they get up and leave, they ignore paying.
Drugs are the fuel in gang crime, which annually generates SEK 3 billion in criminal profits in Sweden, and then only in the first sales phase. In Sollentuna, the police have seen how everything from locals to well-to-do middle class and party junkies on Stureplan buy and fertilize development.
Recently, the police raided the Tureberg network and several leading figures are locked up. This summer day, the police are targeting those who are next in line. Young guys called category D people and are at the bottom of the chain. Still.
– It is easy to stare blindly at the roughest bullies, but we have seen several very young people who we do not know who they are, but who dress in the same way and move like the older ones. Now we have to get an eye on them, otherwise we will be there after the summer holidays with new category B people, says Lennart Karlsson.
At the B level, you are a full-time criminal and do not touch the drugs yourself. Then they have acquired their own salesmen, in the eternal spiral that the police are trying to break.
Inside the police station, representatives of the social services and Mini Maria, the substance abuse care for young people, are prepared to offer voluntary interviews for those who are admitted for drug testing. A way out, if you want.
– It’s easy to believe that everyone just “fuck you, I’m not going to talk to you.” But of course it is possible to reach the young people, at least some, says Lennart Karlsson.
Now the colleagues have in Malmparken approached the boys who move there and close unnoticed by their side. Each police officer poses with a teenager, who with a mixture of giggle and seriousness seeks eye contact with his friends. It turns out to be a boom, after all, they were not here to do drug dealing.
Instead, the focus is soon on a completely different scenario and now everything is moving fast. A young man with a waist bag arrives at high speed on an electric scooter. Apparently, the jungle drum has been about civilians wearing police uniforms, because suddenly he throws his bag and tries to escape but drives straight into a stationary motorcycle police station. The man is arrested and the bag is fished up from the ground. It contains a bundle of banknotes and two suspected headphones, mobile phones where the contact list is the most valuable – buyers who are looking for cannabis and cocaine.
Polisen Rille literally grew up at the police station in Sollentuna because my father worked there. Now he knows the name of every other person in the local police area. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a guy moving on the edge of the gang and walks forward and greets. The guy explains that he hates police, but that Rille is an exception.
– How’s it going? asks Rille, placing one hand on his shoulder.
The guy shakes his head and smiles gently.
– Ash. That’s the adhd and all that shit.
Groove nods. He himself was messy as a teenager but chose a different path. Now he hopes to get more people to do it.
The guy says that he started selling Tramadol, a drug-classified drug, when he was 15 years old. Buyers could be even younger.
– 12, 13 years. Looking back, I would never do that, not sell to anyone under 15 anyway.
The regular customers consisted of two groups, those who abused to manage their jobs and those who only abused. The younger ones belonged to the latter group.
The guy says that he was called a problem child at an early age and did not pass school, but when asked how it is at home, he closes his mouth.
– I do not want to go into that.
He says he has stopped selling but does not want to be photographed, even anonymously.
– If you can take pictures of my hands? Nä. They will recognize me.
They – they are the criminals.
When the evening is over are not so many young people that you managed to get in touch with and only one guy who agreed to talk to the social services. Lennart Karlsson and his colleagues say they must continue.
– Everyone says that new recruitment must be stopped, but nice words are not enough. There must be a workshop too, and this is an attempt.
Facts. Local police area Sollentuna
Consists of three municipalities that all have problems with criminal networks.
There are several areas that the police classify as vulnerable, ie low socio-economic status where criminals affect the local community through, for example, violence, threats, extortion and drug trafficking and where the police may have difficulty doing their job.
Sollentuna – the Edsberg district is classified as vulnerable and Tureberg, where Malmvägen is located, as a risk area.
Sigtuna – the Valsta district is classified as a risk area.
Upplands Väsby.
Several places in the local police area are also so-called open drug scenes where drug trafficking takes place more or less openly.
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