Swedish police to be posted to Denmark to try to stop gangs recruiting children

Swedish police are to be based in Denmark on a preventive basis for the first time in an effort to stop children and young people from Sweden travelling to Copenhagen to commit violent crime on behalf of Danish gangs.

From next week officers from southern Sweden will be permanently posted in Copenhagen, while Danish officers have already joined the Swedish operation room in Malmö.

The unprecedented cross-border arrangements come after a series of serious incidents in the last month – including deadly shootings and possession of weapons such as hand grenades – involving suspects from neighbouring Sweden.

Swedish police said children as young as 12 were being recruited by Danish gangs on social media to cross the border by car or public transport in order to commit crimes.

Last month, a Swedish 16-year-old was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder in connection with a shooting in Blågårds Plads, a quiet square in the Nørrebro neighbourhood of Copenhagen. This week, a 25-year-old Swedish man was arrested while carrying two hand grenades in Tingbjerg, Copenhagen.

The violence has led to warnings this week from both countries’ governments. The Danish justice minister, Peter Hummelgaard, condemned the “depraved culture of violence” in Sweden, saying he did not want such criminality imported to Denmark. His Swedish counterpart, Gunnar Strömmer, has announced he will travel to Denmark next week to meet him.

The violence has also led to increased border checks on trains between Malmö and Copenhagen – a short train journey over the Øresund bridge – and the introduction of special policing zones in the Danish capital where officers are allowed to conduct random checks where there is no suspicion of a crime.

Copenhagen police have said the violence is the result of a simmering conflict between two criminal groups in Denmark. One of them is based around Copenhagen and the other has no fixed base and is largely controlled from outside Denmark, they believe.

While shootings and bombings have been an issue in Sweden for a number of years, the recruitment of young people travelling to Denmark to commit crimes is thought to be a new development that has emerged over the last month.

“They are travelling to Denmark and doing criminal work there. The Danish police have arrested young kids from Sweden as suspects for violent crimes,” said Stefan Sintéus, the commanding police officer for serious organised crime in southern Sweden.

“It’s not a conflict between gangs in Sweden and Denmark. It’s a conflict in Denmark using young kids from Sweden. The criminals are putting up jobs on open sources on social media and the young kids are interested to take the work.”

The children are often vulnerable, he said, and warned that younger children risked facing significantly longer sentences in Denmark than they would in Sweden. Although they are paid, they are largely motivated by “the glory and status as a newborn criminal” he said.

Although Swedish and Danish forces have collaborated before, it is usually in connection with a specific case. This will be the first time officers are permanently stationed in neighbouring forces to carry out preventive work.

Sintéus said by sharing information, investigators hoped to stop young people suspected of travelling from Sweden to Denmark with the intention of committing crimes from reaching the border.

Swedish police are also working with forces in Norway and Finland. The cross-border and online nature of crime networks means officers have to work internationally, said Sintéus. “It’s very global, criminality right now, and it’s digital. We could have a guy sitting in Turkey who is giving the jobs to a criminal in Malmö who will go to Copenhagen to commit the crime.”

Danish police confirmed they were sending officers to southern Sweden “to strengthen the already close cooperation between the two countries’ police authorities in combating organised, cross-border crime” and that they were in an “ongoing dialogue” about posting Swedish officers in Denmark. “This includes, not least, a close daily exchange of information about the current crime scene, which should further increase the speed of concrete investigations.”

The cooperation of the two police teams had led to multiple arrests where they were able to intervene before crimes were committed, said Danish police.

A leading Danish police inspector, Torben Svarrer, said the Danes had seen several cases in which young Swedish citizens had come to Denmark “to commit crimes dangerous to persons”. Intelligence indicated that illegal drugs – specifically the suspected theft of those drugs by “another party” – had played a central role in those cases, he added.