Swedish Police Admit Officers Look To Close Cases Rather Than Solve Them

Swedish police officers have claimed that across the country, a culture has emerged in which officers look for excuses to close cases rather than solve them, blaming the sheer number of new cases to be investigated every day.

Officers in Western Sweden claim that high caseloads and too few officers to deal with them has led many to prioritize certain cases and look for ways to close other cases instead of actively trying to solve them.

“Sometimes you look and turn and twist quite a lot to find a basis for [closing a case],” Sandra Zackrisson, investigator at serious crimes in Gothenburg told Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio.

Peppe Larsson, another officer in Gothenburg, added, “It starts from those of us who take up notifications. Then we see a mentality that sometimes you try to find reasons for ‘how can we put this down for good reason?’ Instead of the opposite, ‘how are we going to solve this?’ This is a direct link to the fact that there are too few of us.”

Several areas in Sweden have reported problems with staffing and resources among police for several years, such as the Southern Lapland area which, in 2017, was reduced to a single police car to patrol an area the size of Denmark due to lack of resources.

In 2016, following the height of the European migrant crisis, a report suggested that as many as 80 per cent of police in Sweden were considering changing careers and claimed as many as three police were quitting the force per day. In 2015 a recently retired top Swedish police officer told Breitbart that a combination of officers requesting transfers away from difficult, high-crime areas and generous family policies meant some areas could be left effectively unpoliced.

To combat the staffing issues, a Swedish police union suggested in 2019 that Sweden’s Police Authority should seriously consider hiring officers who have been trained abroad in countries like neighbouring Norway.

While the police authority welcomed new ideas, it also pointed out that candidates who wish to become Swedish police must be citizens of the country.

In 2017, a report from Swedish broadcaster SVT revealed that just 14 per cent of “everyday crimes” like harassment, simple thefts and vandalism were actually solved and half of the cases reported were never investigated, to begin with.

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