Police working in the notorious no-go Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby have decried the situation in the area, claiming criminals laugh at Swedish laws.
Hanif Azizi, a member of the regional police in Rinkeby, expressed his frustration with the situation in the suburb, which has become notorious for its riots and high levels of crime, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.
He told the broadcaster: “If you have worked for a long time to prosecute people and see that there are no consequences, that the criminals even laugh at us. It is frustrating.”
Policing the area, which also has a high population of migrants and those with migration backgrounds, has been difficult for the local police officers in the past, with officers requiring to be driven to and from the Rinkeby police station due to safety concerns.
Christoffer Ersenius, local union president of the police district of Rinkeby, commented on the issue in 2017, saying: “There is concern among the staff about working in a police station in Rinkeby. We understand this concern, especially when it is about how to safely travel to and from their workplace in Rinkeby.”
The government had already begun construction on a new police station that year, although they had a hard time finding contractors due to safety concerns.
That station was then attacked the following year when several masked men drove a car onto the site before setting the car on fire and attacking a security guard with rocks and fireworks. The attack was believed at the time to have been possibly related to a prior drug bust in the area.
Then-Swedish Chief Prosecutor Lise Tamm labelled Rinkeby as being like “a war zone” in late 2017, stating: “Rinkeby is almost like a war zone. When the police work there, they work as the armed forces would have done.”