"No more peace on Sweden - Riots erupt in their capital " Topic

"…The neighborhood, Rinkeby, was the scene of riots in 2010 and 2013, too. And in most ways, what happened late Monday night was reminiscent of those earlier bouts of anger. Swedish police apparently made an arrest around 8 p.m. near the Rinkeby station. For reasons not yet disclosed by the police, word of the arrest prompted a crowd of youths to gather.

Over four hours, the crowd burned about half a dozen cars, vandalized several shopfronts and threw rocks at police. Police spokesman Lars Bystrom confirmed to Sweden's Dagens Nyheter newspaper that an officer fired shots with intention to hit a rioter, but did not strike his target. A photographer for the newspaper was attacked by more than a dozen men and his camera was stolen, but ultimately no one was hurt or even arrested…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Related story from another outlet.

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A very telling statement showing just one detail of a bad situation:

"Reports of rapes in Sweden jumped 13 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year, and reports of sexual assaults were up 20 percent, according to preliminary data from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention."

Actually the Fox news "data" is a good example of how to mislead using statistics taken out of context.

Sweden records crimes on an individual basis which has the effect that some cases involving a single rapist and one or two victims generate dozens and even hundreds of reported rapes. One infamous case involving a father who abused his two daugthers for a number of years saw him charged with 12% of all rapes reported that year in Sweden.
As a result rape statistics tend to shift up and down depending on wehter there are one or more of cases of long time scale sexual abuse discovered and prosecuted that year.

A good example of this is 2014 & 2015, the year 2015 (i.e the "previous year" mentioned in the Fox News report) saw a reduction of 12% in reported rapes and an over all reduction of reported sex crimes by 11%. The reason for this was that 2014 had seen several large scale sex crime cases which caused a sharp spike that year. Likewise 2013 had seen a reduction in reported rapes compared to 2011-2012 for a similar reason.

2016 does show an increase in sex crimes but for rapes it is impossible to say at the moment just what caused it, minor sexual offences are up as well and that can be connected to certain groups of recent arrivals (basicly the same north african groups that were behind much of the issues in Germany.)

As for the riots they are basicly small scale incidents that would not have gotten reported by Washington Post if not for the connection to the previous statement by the US President.

These flare-ups happen from time to time in certain areas when organized crime are hit by a raid or have major player arrested. Basicly they gather a couple of dozen thugs to create local mayhem in the time it takes the police to respond. (Sweden has a small police force and one that at the moment is in some disarray due to a major reorganisation of the national police.)They then scatter before police reinforcements arrive to squash them.

The truth is that while some of the locals get hit hard by having property destroyed or looted the other 98,5% of Stockholm will not be impacted at all outside reading a paper or watching the news. The LA riots this wasn't

Just the way it goes everywhere in Europe's big cities where the original dwellers descendants now muster from 40 to 60% of the total population and 20 to 30% of the young kids in school. No way back.

In a way the size of the phenomenon is both exagerated by those who can benefit from it and swept under the rug by others ( in power), hoping that not "provoking them" will appease the thing.

The truth as always is the greatest loser.

Well Stockholm has 30% non-Swedish inhabitants and those 30% include Finns and other Europeans. (Finns are the largest non-Swedish ethnic group.)

Sweden is neither hell hole nor the perfect rose garden, we do have issues created by large scale imigration and a failure to integrate some groups into Swedish society but the troublesome groups are frequently not connected to the current refugee crisis.

"Just the way it goes everywhere in Europe's big cities where the original dwellers descendants now muster from 40 to 60% of the total population and 20 to 30% of the young kids in school."

As a resident of one of Europe's fairly big cities, that just doesn't match my experience. Maybe you should rethink which "news" sources you believe.

" A photographer for the newspaper was attacked by more than a dozen men and his camera was stolen. " OK that did make me smile!

Not news, just my eyes and others experience.
At least right for Paris, London, Amsterdam etc.
And for Paris these are unofficial ( as forbiden to gather) DGSE stats.
But Daniel S, I never blamed any one, just stated the changes. There are many reasons for the mess, the original " employers" behaviour not the least.
Never mind, Lets hope for the best. No need to offend the innocents.
And this thread has nothing to do in a wargaming forum, unless one has a rioters championship somewhere in 28 mm?

You know, I'm sure I've seen rioters in both 15mm and 28mm, but I can't remember where right now…

Irregular miniatures;)

One problem is that all the law abiding citizens in the areas where the riots are tend to lose faith in the authorities. They see a passive police force while their cars and stores are vandalized. They see thugs do as they please while police sit in cars 250 ms away and do nothing. Seeing this they are of course upset and their interest in being a part of society is not the greatest, they stop reporting crime as they see no point in it, the authorities do nothing anyway. Thugs are basically challengenging society and in a way winning.

Swedish police cannot gather large enough forces fast enough to quell these riots. So the thugs, in a way, win. They start the riot, do as they please and when police arrive in force maybe 45 minutes later they leave.

The will of the ordinary police officer is more or less to go in and take the streets back but "higher ups" often have a much more "de confrontational" attitude of letting the riot "burn itself out" so to not provoke/escalate the situation further. Unfortunately this is seen as weakness by the thugs as police too often retreat.

A few years ago in another suburb during some riots the thugs "occupied" the local market square/city centre/mall area and actually built barricades of burning tires and trash. The local police commander at the scene had a very different attitude though. He lead a charge with police vans straight into the market, smashing the barricades. Then police disembarked and cleared the square with force. Afterwards hundreds of of people watching this stood on their balconies and applauded the police. There have not been a large scale riot or disturbance in this area since…

Spot on. Politicoes and media are so frightened from their well protected reservation, same everywhere.
Been told of a Gendarme officer in one of our costly (4-5bn each?/year) island also had the charge ( with VAB!) syndrome. It worked…also got homself moved to a paperpushing seat.

The whole thing is very unjust as most of it is sort of tribal ZOC actually hits mostly the not so well off who leave in the same areas and lose heavily.
Denial is the norm. A shame as in fact we are talking about a few 1000 who cast a huge shadow on the struggling quiet 80%.

"no one was hurt or even arrested".

How many people on this thread has ever set foot in Sweden?

What difference does that make? The Medía makes every viewer an expert on the conflicting Neewz stories. The statistics of population breakdown are not seriously questioned. People on this thread in Sweden admit that there is an immigrant problem. Comparison to Germany's spikes in violent crime has been cited. Failure to integrate some immigrant groups has also been stated to be a problem.

Anytime you have a bloc of a foreign culture that basically takes over a whole neighborhood/district, you have a problem. The only peaceful solution is to continue to offer integration through "temptation" of the rising generation(s); meanwhile, promoting the eradication of radical elements that incite the nonintegrated minorities to violence…………….

So that's a negative then?

Cool.

I'm Swedish. Been working as a police officer for 17 years. Been in some riots equivalent to this. Its dark, thugs hurling rocks the size of grape fruits. Some fire firework rockets other use green laser which are very hurtful for the eyes. It is a very stressful situation.

I just saw pictures of a 5 day riot and stonethrowing in roughly the same area in stockholm from 1948, caused by massive unempleyment and powerty. Of course these was 100% white coloured swedes. Apparantly there was riot every year. Now as then riots ar blamed by the media on troublemakers, or other colors or whatrver. Never on the underlying economic reasons: powerty, unemployment, ignored by the powers that be.
The situation is the same in Copenhagen. There has been experiments that show that riots and gangs go away if you give them jobs and housing. Strange isnt it ?
And no the crime rate in areas of new immigrants in sweden has gone down. It hasnt risen.
In my little town of Holbæk in Denmark, where we have the area of most immigrant in the country, the crime rate in this area is distinctly lower per capita, than in the area of the middle class people with their privately owned houses.

Well here in London we are proud of our non-discriminatory equal opportunities. When we had big riots a few years ago people of all races were happily looting side by side….

Weasel – I have if only on a long weekend,but maybe thats why I have a interest in their news and have for a long time.

hornblaeser,
The 1948 riots were not in "roughly the same area", the two districts are about 20km apart. Nor were they caused by "massive unempleyment and powerty", in 1948 unemployment was at an all time low in Sweden which was enjoying a massive post war boom. (Unemployment was 2,8%). The 1948 Götgatan riots occured during the Easter holiday when schools and work places were closed down leaving thousands of teenagers in the crowded Södermalm area with ample free time and nothing to do as cinemas, cofee shops and the like were closed as well. As a result they gathered in large numbers along the Götgatan street and while things may have been a bit rowdy here and there no actual violence or vandalism was recorded prior to the riots. The riots started when overzealous police decided to disperse the crowds in a heavy handed fashion. Thing went down hill form there and thrown rocks and bottles were met by mounted police charging with drawn sabers. Once Easter was over the riots ended as quickly as they had started as the kids went back to school or work.

While the some newspapers certainly blamed "troublemakers" there was in fact considerable criticism of the police both by the media, general public and by city officials due to the level of force used by the Police being seen as unjustified by events.

Despite up to 10.000 teens being in the street during the riots there was little or no deliberate destruction of private property, basicly the kids wanted to be left alone and what violence there was was directed against the police rather than random targets. In 1948 the fire brigade and ambulance service could move freely in the Södermalm, if anything people turned out to help the emergency services rather than attack them.

And no, there wasn't a riot every year.

This weeks riot was entirely diffrent except for also not being caused "massive unempleyment and powerty". What happend was that some 50-80 professional criminals, local thugs and hangers-on turned out to attack a police patrol who had arrested a 17-year old criminal with a long history of violent crime who was on the run from the sentence he was serving.

So, six burned out cars and a few windows broken….

For a city larger than san Francisco, that's not really a story.

That it is a story shows you how little crime there is in Sweden.

Don´t forget the the police had to shoot at people to more or less survive. Don´t forget that stores were looted and that ordinary people are scared to leave their homes in the evenings or that people that "don´t belong there" are threatened and assaulted. Unfortunately some areas are more or less "taken over" by local thugs and extremists. Ambulances going there are robbed and looted, Firefighters going there are assaulted and attacked. Mailmen delivering mail are attacked and robbed. Local busses are sometimes shot at or have large rocks hurled at them. Basically everything that belongs to "normal society" need police protection to do their job in these areas. And even the police have to have other police protection them when they do their job. if a police car is left unguarded it will be burned or smashed. So at least four police officers go there, two to work and two to guard the police cars, if possible you should be at least 6 officers as the two officers guarding the cars are easily "swamped" by a hostile crowd. You have to be attentive to your surroundings, always scan for crowds, youths who might want to throw rocks, avoid overpasses where they can throw stuff at you from above, wear protective glasses to protect your eyes from green lasers and such. And always have an escape route.

Yes the physical damage was not that big but the underlying reasons for it happening is not something to laugh about.

"So, six burned out cars and a few windows broken…."

According to posts above, you can only count that as 1 car and 1 window.

Soledad – it's not something to take lightly, but I'm going to guess a lot happens nightly in many smaller american cities…

And that wouldn't make national news even in America.

Yup I know that, but this has become a common occurrence here in Sweden nowadays, until a few years ago it was very uncommon, but something happened during the last five years or so. The shift have been very strong and sudden and a lot (read almost all) politicians have refused to acknowledge it, if you brought up the subject you were immediately branded with some less than flattering epithets. The tactic was to ignore the problem and hope they would disappear. But now we are getting close to discussing politics which this forum is not the place for.

Lets get back to the important things in life, small metal figures and vehicles made from different materials!

soledad, Hey on a lighter note if you would like maybe we can swap patches or other cop articles.

Soledad ( funny name for a viking/ hoping to retire near Alicante?)
Your story would be the same a French cops. Maybe some brits and Nl but I never met any to say so.
Tribal zones. Till last decades still not totally repopulated, that's why the difference. Also near complete impunity, esp for minors. The system as it is is powerless. Inheritance from letting ghettos being built, the happy bourgeois having " those people" parked far away, out of sight, no one cared. Now they ended up giving birth to millions ( 12-18 millions here?).
In a not here not there a-cultured state, with very scant hopes.

@irish marine
I'm not much of a collector but I would be happy to mail you some stuff. If I get your email we can continue there and I will get you some items.

Jcfrog. I agree. Our laws are made for people who follow them. As you write minors here can get away with almost anything.

I'm not able to discern anything related to ultramodern warfare or gaming in this thread. So the question, "Why?", naturally occurs to me.

Why?

Rod Robertson.

At least it got a bump to the top of the list with you post.