In Sweden, bystanders were again injured by shots from gang members. By August, the escalating violence had claimed as many lives as it had in all of last year.
crime scene playground. Gang crime in Sweden is shifting to residential areas.
Gang crime in Sweden continues to spread and keeps hitting bystanders: on Friday evening, a four-year-old boy and a woman were hit by bullets on a playground in Eskilstuna. Witnesses who were on the busy green space between high-rise buildings reported that around ten shots were fired.
The victims were hospitalized with minor injuries. The boy suffered a graze in the stomach. Both were able to leave the hospital until Saturday.
As far as the perpetrator or his real target is concerned, the police are groping in the dark. According to the previous investigations, it should be a lone perpetrator. There have already been around twenty shootings in Eskilstuna this year.
Despite an increased police presence, the escalation of violence could not be stopped – a typical development in many Swedish cities, where criminal gang members are acting more and more ruthlessly.
Exactly one week before Eskilstuna’s crime, a brutal murder in Malmö shocked: There, a 31-year-old gang leader was murdered in the middle of a busy shopping center, a passing 39-year-old tourist suffered serious injuries. The perpetrator is a 15-year-old who has been targeted by the police and social services for several years and who escaped from a youth center in Gothenburg.
The shootings in Malmö and Eskilstuna with uninvolved victims bring back memories of a tragic case in Stockholm: two years ago, a 12-year-old girl died at a gas station after being hit by a stray bullet.
Shocking death statistics
The war between rival gangs has resulted in an unprecedented deadly record: 46 people have been shot dead this year so far than in all of 2021, when 45 were killed.
According to police statistics, around 70 people have been injured in the approximately 255 shootings so far – a development that is dominating the debates just two weeks before the Swedish parliamentary elections. After the recent crime, several party leaders changed their campaign program to make a pilgrimage to the crime scene in Eskilstuna.
Conservative opposition leader Ulf Kristersson has called for changes in the law to end gang crime. The developments in Eskilstuna prove that the state has lost control and that Sweden needs a change of government after eight years. Kristersson grew up not far from the crime scene.
The criticized Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson spoke of an “attack on society as a whole” that can only be fought together. Your government has increased the police force and increased the penalties, but this is not enough. Among other things, the hiring of minors by criminals must be punished. The social democrat called for cooperation across the block borders to put an end to gang violence.
The gangs can hardly be defeated by the police
However, this is easier said than done. According to police chief Magnus Sjöberg of the National Operational Unit, which specializes in deadly gang violence, the criminal networks cannot be defeated. “These are not organizations that you can bankrupt and put out of business,” he told TT.
Rather, it is about social structures in which violence plays an important role; Violence is an ideology that is consciously chosen by the mostly young men. The crimes are contagious, every murder triggers revenge actions.
“Anyone who is offended must restore respect,” says Sjöberg. These structures cannot simply be dissolved, as many politicians would demand. The police are working to weaken the gangs and make their members understand that violence is not worth it and that the price is too high.
In addition to Sweden’s failure to integrate large groups of immigrants, which has led to segregated neighborhoods with high unemployment, poverty and crime, the limited legal remedies that can be seen in international comparison is still a problem in the fight against crime.
At the beginning of the year, the so-called penalty discount for young people was lifted, so that 18 to 20-year-olds now also have to fully atone for their crimes. Serious criminals, however, do not shy away from hiring minors to commit serious crimes and even murder.