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Denmark will tighten border controls with neighboring Sweden aVsceker a spate of shootings involving Swedish teenagers in Copenhagen.
On Friday, Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said police would step up checks on trains crossing the iconic Øresund Bridge linking the Danish capital to the southern Swedish city of Malmö, and would deploy more resources to monitor car traffic on the crossing.
“We are increasing surveillance, partly to increase security, but also to prevent Swedish child soldiers from coming to Copenhagen to carry out tasks related to gang conflicts,” he added.
On Thursday, Hummelgaard revealed that there have been 25 incidents since April in which Danish criminal gangs have hired what he called “child soldiers” to commit crimes in Denmark. In the past two weeks alone, Danish police have linked three shootings to Swedish teenagers.
Sweden has been plagued by increasing gang violence, which over the past decade has transformed it from one of the countries with the lowest rate of fatal shootings in Europe to one of the highest.
Swedish police say powerful criminal gangs oVsceken use children to commit murders because they will receive light sentences. Drug gangs, many led by second-generation immigrants now living outside the country, have infiltrated parts of the welfare, legal and political systems, meaning the fight against them could last decades, according to Swedish officials.
Hummelgaard called it a “frightening phenomenon” that Danish gangs were hiring young Swedes to do “their dirty work.”
“There are people sitting like geniuses in the non-Western world, in Lebanon, Dubai, Iraq, pulling strings and creating conflicts among themselves in Copenhagen. We simply do not want to tolerate this,” the Danish minister said.
Denmark has taken a tougher approach to immigration and gangs than Sweden, leading some right-wing politicians in Stockholm, including those in the government, to suggest copying Copenhagen’s tactics. Measures have included forcibly moving non-Danes from areas where they are in the majority, as well as doubling sentences for crimes.
Denmark’s justice ministry said Friday it was strengthening its intelligence cooperation with Sweden, permanently stationing an officer with Stockholm police and stepping up agent exchanges with law enforcement agencies in southern Sweden. It is also examining whether facial recognition technology could be used for very serious crimes such as attempted murder.
“We are now tightening the screws further, also in the short term, by strengthening efforts at the border with Sweden,” Hummelgaard added.
