Residents in the Stockholm suburb of Husby have started taking the law into their own hands after law enforcement, despite pleas from locals, has done little to alleviate problems with migrant crime.
Husby, northwest of Stockholm, is one of many areas across Sweden that are considered “vulnerable” due to high unemployment and high rates of crime, with a 2017 report claiming there were as many as 61 “no-go areas”, with 23 of them considered “particularly vulnerable.”
In recent months, residents of the area have complained of growing insecurity, telling local police about months of problems with homeless drug addicts who often camp out in storage rooms and basements of people’s homes, the newspaper Aftonbladet reports.
According to one local police officer, the addicts have been in the area since around April and many are illegal immigrants.
“These people are very vulnerable. They are undocumented and they will be sent out of the country while having nowhere to go. They are desperate and then they have tried to get hold of money by robbing people and burglarizing,” the official said.
Locals have stated that areas of Husby have become littered with syringes. Robberies have surged, with even the local mosque being subjected to thefts. Several women have also been robbed in the area as they went to a local shop or to do their laundry.
Even local criminals have reported thefts to police, claiming they fear for the safety of their family members in the area.
Residents, mostly young people, have pushed back against the surging crime and started meeting in the evenings to search for addicts in the area.
“We have made several reports to the police, but it feels like we have not been taken seriously, because there has been no change. So we decided to find these addicts and try to have a dialogue with them,” one of the youths, an 18-year-old, said:
We’ve tried to talk to them to get them to stop robbing and stealing, but these people are on different substances and drugs and they haven’t been receptive to dialogue. Many of them have also been armed and once one of them attacked us. Then we fought back.
Videos have since been posted on social media showing the vigilantes chasing addicts, while some addicts were found in parts of Husby badly beaten.
By the end of July, however, many of the addicts appear to have left the area and reports of thefts and assaults have subsided for several weeks. Two members of a local NGO claimed that while they condemned the violence against the addicts, it appears to have worked in forcing them to leave the area.
The NGO workers blamed the lack of action by the police for allowing the situation to rise to the level of violence.
Husby, which has a high population of immigrants and those from immigrant backgrounds, has been a problem area for many years, with local women often reporting not feeling safe in the area.
In 2017, a proposal was made to use “feminist urban planning” to help solve the issue of insecurity for women, which included plans to increase the number of street lights and enhance their brightness.
Local businesses have also complained about insecurity as far back as 2016 and while the local authorities promised to hire security guards to patrol areas in Husby, as of 2017, no security company would accept the contract.
