Fewer bullets, fewer bombs: How Sweden is turning the tide on gangland violence

FARSTA, Sept 13 — “Good job!” Outside Stockholm’s Farsta subway station where a 2023 shooting killed two innocent bystanders, locals thank Max Akerwall and his police team for turning the tide on gang violence.

An otherwise tranquil country, Sweden has endured over a decade of brutal attacks by organised crime networks, featuring automatic weapons, grenades and explosives, sometimes in broad daylight.

An almost daily occurrence a few years ago as the networks battled over the drugs market, the violence has decreased significantly.

“Sweden was experiencing a wave of violence in 2022 and 2023,” said Akerwall, police commissioner for Stockholm’s southern district, recalling the peak of deadly shootings and bombings.

“But we’ve managed to reverse the trend,” he told AFP, the relief almost tangible in his voice.

In January-June this year, eight people were killed and 15 wounded in 39 shootings, down from 34 killed and 49 wounded in 205 shootings in the same period in 2022, according to police.

Bombings have come down from 108 in January-June last year to 75 this year.

Akerwall credits the turnaround to measures introduced by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s right-wing government, in power since 2022.

It has promised to pursue its crackdown if re-elected in Sunday’s general election.

The left-wing opposition is also in favour of maintaining the hard line.

“In the past four years we’ve gotten many new tools, with new legislation,” Akerwall said.

Tougher sentences for gun possession have been “a game changer”, he said, as have expanded police powers, new surveillance tools, broader international cooperation and more information-sharing between authorities.

‘Increased sense of security’ 

At a drab commercial centre in the nearby suburb of Ragsved – qualified by police as a high-crime “vulnerable area” with an “open drug scene” – cops on foot patrol watch out for known troublemakers.

Security cameras perched on building facades record every move.

“All of these measures help to create calm, an increased sense of security in society,” Akerwall said.

Swedish police patrol a street outside the Farsta metro station in Farsta, south of Stockholm in a bid to quell a decade-long gang violence involving automatic weapons, grenades and explosives. — AFP pic

Greger Pettersson, a 65-year-old who has lived in Ragsved most of his life, said he had heard “several shootings” here in the past.

“I had a shooting right outside my home. That was pretty close.”

Yet he never felt unsafe enough to move away.

“You learn to read people” and stay out of the way, he said.

53-year-old Ahcene Oumeraci said the situation had improved.

“You don’t hear shootings anymore, there hasn’t been that much lately,” the father-of-five said.

Recruiting kids 

But major challenges remain.

Gang leaders orchestrate operations from abroad, recruiting kids on encrypted apps to carry out hits for cash, knowing they won’t be prosecuted because they’re under the age of criminal responsibility, recently cut from 15 to 14.

“What still worries me is the recruiting. There are so unbelievably many young people being recruited on social media, on their phones,” Akerwall said.

From January to July, 170 children under the age of 15 were suspected of involvement in violent crimes, police data showed.

The government has introduced legislation requiring social media platforms to take down adverts for hitmen, abolished more lenient sentences for young offenders, and enabled police to use coercive measures against children to get at the criminals ordering the crimes.

It is also pursuing gang leaders hiding out abroad. The leader of the Foxtrot network, Rawa Majid, is known to be in Iran.

The networks have also infiltrated public agencies, politics, businesses and the legal and penitentiary systems, posing a “systemic threat,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer said.

Home to 10.6 million people, Sweden has more than 17,000 active gang criminals, police say. A half-million people live in areas with “parallel justice systems” run by the networks, a government inquiry concluded.

Sven Granath, criminology expert at Stockholm University, said Sweden needed to “safeguard its welfare system”.

“There will be fewer people inclined toward violence and criminal careers if society and the environment they grow up in is more secure.”

Akerwall is “hopeful,” saying: “We will do everything in our power to continue pushing back against crime.” — AFP