It was around 7pm on Friday evening that the woman and the child were shot near a playground in the Åby district. Several people were at the scene and witnessed the incident.
“It’s a disaster when it goes this far, there’s no other way to express it,” says Jimmy Jansson (S), chairman of the municipal board in Eskilstuna.
Eskilstuna is one of the cities hit hardest this year in terms of the number of shootings. According to Eskilstuna-Kuriren there have been at least 22 shootings, of which ten in Årby.
Creates credibility issues
That such a development creates insecurity among the residents is not something that Jimmy Jansson sticks under the chair with.
“You can’t be anything other than insecure when something like this happens.” If you have idiots running around and shooting at each other, you become insecure, that goes without saying.
He highlights that the people who engage in this type of crime are in many cases known to both the police, social services and the public. Despite that, they can continue to commit serious crimes, which Jansson believes creates potential credibility problems for the state.
“The democratic state appears to be ridiculous when it stands so defeated by the fact that you know what fools are at work and yet you can’t get at them, it becomes very frustrating,” he says.
“Draconian measures required”
TT: How would you say that the room for action looks like for the municipalities in relation to the national level?
— Violent criminals running around murdering each other and shooting guns in neighborhoods is a task for the police. We have no tools, we have no police officers. We can’t send out guards to wrestle down armed people.
He says that the municipality, through the social service, certainly has the opportunity to forcibly dispose of young people who are at risk of harming themselves and others and to provide support to their families.
— But that doesn’t stop the situation as it looks now, when it’s happening all over the country, but here you have to stop the influx, but above all the ones that are going on right now. In that situation, some kind of draconian measures from the rule of law that we have not seen before are required and it has to happen quickly.
Calls for national collection
For this to become a reality, a national gathering is required where parties on both sides sit down and make up together, says Jimmy Jansson.
— I am so extremely tired of this bickering between parties in the Riksdag who actually think almost exactly the same thing. Sit down, put forward an actionable package that will start by getting these people off the streets, make sure you get five or ten years in prison if you’re running around with a gun on you.