Police Commissioner Erik Nord has acknowledged that mass migration is linked to the surge in fatal shootings in Sweden after a report noted Sweden was the only European country seeing a rising trend of fatal gun violence.
Commissioner Nord, who heads the police in the Greater Gothenburg region, commented on the recent report from the Crime Prevention Council (Brå), saying that the trend was linked to gang violence and migrants.
“It is no longer a secret today that much of the problem of gang and network crime with the shootings and explosions have been linked to migration to Sweden in recent decades,” Nord wrote in an opinion article for the newspaper Goteborgs Posten.
“When, like me, you have the opportunity to follow matters at the individual level, you see that virtually everyone who shoots or is shot in gang conflicts originates from the Balkans, the Middle East, North or East Africa,” he said.
Nord claims that several factors have led to an increase in shootings, saying cultural differences play a major role.
He notes that while Germany has also seen a large number of migrants since the migrant crisis in 2015, the fatal gun violence rate in Germany is far lower than in Sweden. Nord attributes the difference to the lack of police per capita in Sweden compared to Germany.
“It may be that part of the explanation for the bleak development in Sweden stems from a too small-sized police force that for many years has built up a debt that is now manifesting itself in the form of deadly gun violence,” he said.
Nord’s comments come months after he was accused of being “racist” for stating that foreign criminals do not belong in Sweden.
Several reports in recent years have revealed the problems Sweden has with gang violence and its relation to mass migration, such as a February 2020 report that noted all of the violent gang leaders in Stockholm had migrant backgrounds.
In September 2019, a report revealed that shooting suspects in the city of Malmö overwhelmingly came from migrant backgrounds, as well.