Swedish police have for the first time made use of a new law permitting the introduction of temporary ‘safety zones’ in high-crime areas. The ‘stop-and-frisk’ law, which took force in April, allows police to conduct body searches as well as vehicle searches without a warrant or probable cause “to the extent necessary to prevent or stop the criminal activity that the zone has been introduced to counteract.” The searches are only allowed in public places.
The first application of the new law was announced on June 5th for the Hageby neighborhood of Norrköping. It will initially be in effect until June 18th, but can be canceled or prolonged.
Norrköping, a city of about 145,000 located about 160 km southwest of Stockholm, has been plagued by an ongoing gang war, centered in the Hageby area. Since May of last year, criminal gangs have committed several bombings, a shooting at a shopping mall, and a shooting at the front door of an apartment building. The number of shootings in the city doubled during 2023 to a total of 15. So far in 2024, the city has seen 11 shootings, 3 of them deadly.
On June 2nd, a double murder, suspected to be gang-related, occurred in an apartment in the area. As police believe the murders were committed in retaliation for an earlier shooting, this prompted the decision to create a safety zone.
Human rights organizations as well as JO, the parliamentary ombudsman, have criticized the ‘stop-and-frisk’ zones as an infringement on privacy and questioned its constitutionality. The ombudsman for discrimination also opposed the law, saying it would entail “clear and unacceptable risks for discrimination,” an opinion shared by opposition parties on the Left. Other critics have commented that crime is not a stationary activity, and that implementing the zones will only make gangs relocate to areas where police jurisdiction does not allow these searches.
Sweden, once a homogenous country where every murder made the front page of every newspaper, had from the beginning of 2024 until May 15th experienced 109 shootings with 14 dead and 19 injured. During the same period, police recorded 50 bombings, 29 attempted bombings, and 74 preparations for bombing attacks.
Last year, the total number of shootings recorded by police in the country were 363, with 53 deaths, as well as 149 bombings.
