Swedish Police Identify Nearly 750 Cocaine Buyers, Many Middle-Class Families From ‘Affluent’ Areas

Police officials in the Swedish city of Gothenburg have managed to positively identify 745 cocaine buyers, claiming that a large portion are parents in affluent areas of the city.

The cocaine buys were able to be identified from the mobile phones used by four young men indicted on Monday for drug trafficking charges, with investigators alleging that the four sold drugs to “party junkies” across the greater Gothenburg region.

“What stands out is the number of identified buyers, and that in people’s eyes these have been ordinary hardworking families with good finances, without a known addiction. They often have young children and live in affluent areas,” investigator Johan Ekström told broadcaster SVT.

According to investigators, many of the people regularly buying cocaine from the traffickers are people who have no prior criminal records at all but noted the money they spend goes directly to criminal gang networks.

Over the last several months, police have monitored the trade in cocaine, saying that sellers had been operating every day before the arrests. Following the arrests of the sellers, police were able to confiscate five mobile phones, which is where they found the information on the buyers.

Police say that around 30 buyers were arrested after being caught purchasing cocaine, another 50 have seen a visit from officers and the remaining hundreds of others will likely see visits in the future as well.

Drugs are linked to Swedens growing gang violence problems, which have seen the country rise to the top position among many European countries for fatal shootings, many of which are linked to gang activity.

A report from the Crime Prevention Council, Brå, revealed that it was mostly young men aged 20 to 29 who were involved in fatal shootings and that most came from migration backgrounds and lived in so-called vulnerable or no-go areas.

Last year in October, Swedish police chief Sven Holgersson also noted that the majority of bombings, as many as 98 per cent, in the city of Helsingborg were also linked to drug trafficking.

I say that 98 per cent of the explosions are due to drugs and money. You start trading drugs and you owe money. If you don’t pay, it blows up,” Holgersson said.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com