As noted here, Sweden defied the lockdown regimen that so many other countries adopted to fight the coronavirus. And Sweden turned out to be far more correct than many of these other countries.
So, hats off to Sweden, for defying the conventional pseudoscience, and for getting the virus under some semblance of control.
On the other side of the ledger, we discover that the pusillanimous Swedes are suffering a crime wave, produced by gangs of migrants. The cause is quite simple. Sweden has chosen a soft approach to policing, something that is roughly akin to what we have in our great blue cities. They ask the police to look the other way, to ignore the problem. The criminal gangs can do what they please. The weak politicians are happy and the local police are exasperated.
The Daily Mail has the story:
Migrant mafia gangs are terrorising Sweden's streets with a surge of bombings and murders, forcing police chiefs in one of Europe's most liberal countries to admit they are losing their grip on law and order.
Just five years after the country welcomed refugees with open arms, criminal clans from the Middle East, north Africa and the Balkans are behind soaring crime rates in their once peaceful cities, police say, with 257 bombings and more than 300 shootings last year.
You would think that this experience would alert people to the fact that welcoming large numbers of unassimilable refugees with open arms is not such a good idea. For the most part it has not.
How bad is it? Here is one example:
In one extraordinary incident in August, Gothenburg's most notorious crime family, the Ali Khan gang, set up roadblocks in the northeast of the city, shining torches into cars to hunt for members of a rival mob.
Police broke up the checkpoints and made 20 arrests. But in a move that was seen as symbolic of Sweden's 'soft touch', the suspects were released because prosecutors decided they hadn't broken the law.
Unfortunately, the prime minister who led the successful fight against coronavirus refuses to admit that these gangs are comprised of migrants. He imagines that if he says such a thing, he will be accused of being a racist; we will sacrifice the lives of untold citizens to avoid that curse:
The country's Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, has consistently refused to admit that migrants are behind the increasing violence. But as the situation spirals out of control, police officers are breaking their silence.
'Two years ago, if people linked immigration to crime as I am now, they would be accused of being racist,' Mr Nord said. 'But the paradigm is shifting.'
Last month, the country's deputy chief of police, Mats Löftving, identified 40 mafia clans who had come to Sweden 'solely for the purpose of organising and systemising crime'.
His comments came after the roadblock incident, which was part of a feud sparked when members of a group called the Backa Gang shot at a member of the notorious Ali Khan group.
The Ali Khan family has been dubbed a mafia organisation by Swedish police and media alike, though its members insist that the convictions of some do not represent the whole.
Members of the family have been reported to the authorities more than 200 times in the last two years, but in many of the cases the informants mysteriously withdraw their complaints.
What kinds of crimes do the gangs commit?
He added: 'The types of crime that the Ali Khans are known for are murder, extortion, serious violations of a woman's integrity, physical abuse, unlawful threats, drug crimes and unlawful possession of weapons.'
It gets worse:
The Ali Khans and roadblocks in Gothenburg are just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to the 40 clans there are hundreds of smaller gangs, and conflicts between rivals mean that only one month of the last three years has passed without a mob-related killing in Sweden. There are now 10 times as many killings as there are in Germany.
This summer, a 12-year-old girl was shot dead by a stray bullet near Stockholm, while in Gothenburg a teacher was kidnapped and beaten after he reported two armed men outside his school. An eight-year old British boy was killed in a grenade attack in the same city while visiting family in 2016.
Last month, foreign exchange students at Dalarna University in Borlänge, central Sweden, pleaded to be moved from their digs in an immigrant-dominated neighbourhood after a spate of shootings, robberies, stabbings, rapes and school arson attacks.
They had been housed in the Tjärna Ängar area, which has soaring rates of violent crime and is home to high numbers of migrants from troubled countries like Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The crime wave began when the nation opened its borders to migrants:
Sweden, long seen as the most open in the world, began opening its doors to asylum seekers in the Eighties and took in one of the highest numbers in Europe during the migration surge of 2015.
The Ali Khans and other established clans arrived in Sweden in the first wave of mass migration, 30 years ago. The family originated in Palestine and Mardin, in southeast Turkey, but spread to Lebanon in the last century and from there to northern Europe.
Besides, the Swedes are not just opposed to policing. They are offering generous welfare payments to new migrants.
According to Mr Nord, these crime rings are drawn to the country by state handouts. 'Why have they based themselves in Sweden? It's obvious,' he said.
'Our generous welfare system and trusting society can be exploited by the criminal networks. Half of the disabled benefit we pay out is fraudulently taken by the gangs. Sometimes they get divorced so that the Government will give them another flat, then move back in with their ex-wives and rent it out.
‘When the clan system found in the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans was transferred into Sweden, with our high level of social trust, it mutated into organised crime.
‘We see the migrants leaving the country for a few months, then coming back in a wheelchair to claim disability benefit. This is the beginning of the exploitation.
'It is terrible because police resources are being used to address the problem that we have created ourselves.'
Chumps they are, these Swedes. In very little time they will not have a country.
Of course, some countries are not quite as generous toward their Muslim populations. Rather than go the path of Sweden, they have practiced forced assimilation. Needless to say, we do not approve of forced assimilation, but, looking at what what happens to a country when it opens its borders, allows in masses of unassimilable migrants and refuses to police the criminal gangs they form-- can you really blame them?
4 comments:
I have a theory about how we, and the Swedes, got to this dismal point.
To begin with, I happen to completely agree with Robert Peel's #1 Policing Principle:
1:"Prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment."
Peel founded the Metropolitan Police Force in London, at least in part, to replace privately hired "security" thugs and the occasional lamppost hanging by angry citizen mobs. I clearly recall scenes of Marshal Matt Dillon and Chester - wonderful, brave Chester - standing tall in front of the jail defying unruly mobs of townies looking for "justice".
But as the spouse of a lawyer - and having had a few rather dissatisfying interactions with the police during my mostly-wasted early adulthood - I routinely tell people "the police are not your friend". Maggie's Farm posted a delightful YouTube video yesterday entitled "Don't Talk to the Police". Worth a watch.
I'm not suggesting the police should be your friend. But, sadly, in my lifetime the performance of police departments in the US has been ever-more measured, not by crime suppression, but by arrest rates and clearance rates. It's common knowledge that some fines are simply alternative means of revenue enhancement. Asset forfeiture has become an income stream. Qualified immunity, IMO, has supported, if not encouraged, bad policing. Police departments have been encouraged to buy more and more military-grade equipment. Police squads have been formed that grotesquely imitate of black-clad, armored and heavily armed Special Operations teams, and these squads sometimes use Constitutionally-questionable methods. I cannot help but think these "SWAT" (a disgusting acronym, if there ever was one) squads, tearing through neighborhoods in armored vehicles, kicking down doors at 3AM, attract precisely the wrong kind of individual. So, yeah, I get why many people hate the police.
As a result of all this, fueled by deranged race theories, the pendulum swung.
Call me reactionary, but I think the "broken windows" community policing approach with officers walking a beat and free to "stop and frisk" were far more likely to suppress crime. And keep the peace, which is, after all, the point.
I think in Sweden, and in deep-blue US cities, the arc of the pendulum is swinging left and passing through a point where "community policing" is going to be redefined as the Latin Kings establishing roadblocks in Cicero IL to keep Antifa mobs from burning down their neighborhood. And I don't blame them, given the fact that Mayor Lori Lightfoot (who has an unfortunate resemblance to Beetlejuice) isn't going to stop the mobs.
This is not going to end well.
Watching news stories from Sweden over the last ten years, and Sweden's denial of the sources of crime (viz. Malmo?), gave me my first 21st C. taste of government/media "Gaslighting"of the public.
Not "Gaslighting" in the sense of "fool somebody", but "Gaslighting" in the sense of "deliberately drive another human being insane, and deny you are doing it".
- shoe
Horrible.
And the cure is as well, but no one in our present state of denial will admit they know the cure.
Don't know how I missed this yesterday, but I think the Swedish men should access their inner VIKING selves and go a-viking to regain their land. It may be too late for that.
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