A Swedish social media campaign to recruit new police officers has raised eyebrows as it appears to primarily focus on non-native Swedes.
“We need Sweden’s best talents on our side,” the advertising copy says in Swedish, followed by text in Arabic, Spanish, or Albanian. In translation, that text reads, “That’s why we are looking for you who can find words in more than one language and see the world from multiple perspectives.”
The goal is to recruit bi- or multilingual applicants, Lena Glennert, communications strategist with the Police Authority, said:
Society has become more complex and heterogeneous, and we need cultural and linguistic competence to handle the core mission. That’s why we want to clearly target the group that possesses this competence.
Applicants will still be required to be fluent in Swedish, Glennert emphasized—something MP Katja Nyberg (SD), a police officer with 20 years of service, said is untrue:
The police are advertising in Arabic—meanwhile, there is no requirement to even pass a Swedish language test to get into the Police Academy. The Swedish test was abolished in 2012. … Reinstate the requirement for proficient Swedish—then we can discuss other languages.
“We need law and order,” Nyberg said, “not symbolic politics.”
