https://www.friatider.se/polisledningen-tvingade-polisen-att-inte-ingripa-mot-valdet
The police command forbade the police to intervene against the violence. The scandalous images of criminal immigrants publicly humiliating police have been cabled across the world today. Now the effort is being criticized from all sides and individual police officers are writing op-eds about how they have been reluctantly forced by management to back down and let the criminals take over the city.
After the failed handling of Rasmus Paludan's Koran burning, the police management is now receiving criticism from researchers, the public and individual police officers.
Norrköpings Newspaper has published an article by an intervention police officer who was first involved in an understaffed operation in Skäggetorp in Linköping, where a stone-throwing crowd managed to overpower the police and drive them out of the area.
However, reinforcements quickly arrived from surrounding districts.
"After an hour or so, we are about a hundred police officers. Every single one of us is ready to go into Skäggetorp to reclaim the land the community has lost. But the management does not dare," writes the police, who are very frustrated with the decision.
"I want the citizens of Linköping and especially of Skäggetorp to know that every single police officer was ready to go back in. Every police officer wanted to go back in. I want the leadership of the police to know that their decision was up to the walls wrong."
Police researcher and police officer Stefan Holgersson tells DN that much of what Sweden has been good at when it comes to handling riots has now disappeared from the Swedish police as a result of the agency's well-known structural problems.
- It is insane that the current development is allowed and that politicians say they have full confidence in the police leadership.
According to Holgersson, the shortcomings affect both the police's ability to intervene and the judgements linked to situations where it is important for police officers to act physically.
Tomas Stjernfeldt, vice-president of the police union, agrees that the efforts have been a failure. - Of course it is a failure when we have quite a few injured colleagues. It's about freedom of expression issues that we have not been able to maintain, we have areas in society where we have not been able to secure the public, says Tomas Stjernfeldt to Aftonbladet. On Twitter, several police officers write their views on the incident. An area police officer with drug crimes as his area of expertise writes that the police need more violent tools to deal with riots, which do not involve deadly violence.
"I would have liked to see paintball guns with pepper and paint so you can tag the worst and also be able to operate at a distance. Preferably with paint that can't be washed off the skin," the police wrote on Twitter. According to the police, the use of firearms is prohibited to arrest someone for, for example, blue light sabotage or violent rioting.
"Those crimes are not listed in the firearms code. PS. If the suspect has half a kilo of amphetamines on him, however, there is legal support," writes the regional police and links to the legislation.
However, the police were forced to use firearms in self-defence several times during the riots, something that is always permitted.
There has also been criticism from liberals and the media, with the Bonniers liberal evening paper Expressen saying - as usual with liberals - that the police should have restricted freedom of expression.
"Cowardly police chief's decision is behind violent riots" is the headline of an article in which editor-in-chief Fredrik Sjöshult writes:
"However, cowardly police chiefs should not have given permission to Paludan's rallies on the basis of the second chapter of the Public Order Act." But curtailing freedom of speech in response to the troublemakers' actions is seen by few police officers as a reasonable solution, judging by the reactions on social media. Nor does researcher Stefan Holgersson. - Even if you think the person who is putting their message across is an idiot, you have to stick to the principle, as long as it's not criminal. Otherwise you end up on a slippery slope where the police or some other actor will decide which opinions are the right ones, he tells DN.