During the month leading up to the murder, the now convicted 17-year-old’s mother repeatedly alerted the social services. In their documents you can read that the woman feared that her son would be hired for a murder. She wanted him urgently taken care of. She wanted to fly him to Somalia. In an interview with DN in November last year, the mother told about her helplessness.
– If someone had said that help is in heaven, I would have done everything to climb up there. Still, it did not help. We need more support.
When this became known touched on many of the mother’s story. One of them was the Green Party’s Karin Pleijel, who received political support for her idea of an accident investigation into the young people who were drawn into gangs.
In March, it was ready and the verdict on the city became harsh: there was a lack of knowledge, lack of cooperation and lack of resources. One thing was more important than anything else to fix, said Karin Pleijel when she commented on the report.
– Social services and schools must react earlier. Many want help and the children and families should never have to look for help, she said then.
The election campaign is now proposing her party a 50-point program for vulnerable areas in Gothenburg and Pleijel reiterates that there must be an end to the authorities’ passivity.
– There was a kind of earthquake in Gothenburg society when the police – who are supposed to protect the population – fell for a bullet. But we still have a society that for decades has become too administratively burdened, with too many downpipes. In such a system, you can not be quick-footed and take overall responsibility when something goes wrong.
In addition to the municipality’s accident investigation, an alternative report was also made which called itself the People’s Accident Commission. It was the Neutral Youth Association in Biskopsgården that produced it and there several mothers testified to exactly the same desperation that the 17-year-old’s mother expressed. They watch themselves as hawks over the children and live with constant anxiety.
Fardowsa Mohammed, chairman of the youth association, does not think that anything has improved in this area during the past year. Every day she talks to a mother whose twelve-year-old recently came home from a residence where he was sent to get away from the 30-year-old drug dealers he hung out with. Now the boy gets no more efforts. It feels as if the social has given up, the women think.
– Our report was well received by all. Cops, journalists, politicians … Everyone said it was not okay, that this must not be the case. But then it continues in the same way, says Fardowsa Mohammed.
The social administration at Hisingen is a fairly new organization, led by director Christina Alvelin. She can state that since 2020, the field assistants on the island have become at least ten more and another eight new socionomers work in a special team aimed at investigating young people in crime, something Hisingen is alone in the city about. The team is followed by researchers because the approach is new and untried.
– But the expectations of what we can achieve are very high, and it is not easy to break a criminal life, she says when she gets to take part in the Neutral Youth Association’s picture.
She herself still feels a certain hope. The collaborations that have now started between the police, school, social services and housing companies feel promising for the head of administration. It only requires that they be allowed to work long-term.