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The fog spreads behind the leader of the preliminary investigation, Lennart Karlsson. With a snail on his ear, he waits outside one of the skyscrapers while his colleagues search an apartment for weapons.
In 2020, the police have intensified their work against criminal networks in Märsta and Sigtuna after the number of serious violent crimes, economic crimes and drug crimes increased in the municipality in recent years. Recently, in early October, a man was shot and killed in the Valsta district. There is both a family-based criminal network and a more loosely composed one, the Märstan network. According to the police, most of the explosions and shootings in recent years in the municipality may be connected to the Märstan network.
Photo: Roger Turesson
– They have their geographic identity and affiliation in Märsta and commit crimes to varying degrees. It is earned mainly from the sale of drugs, but also from property crimes such as extortion and theft, says Lennart Karlsson.
Be part of the Sollentuna police the so-called focus groups and long-term work in the municipalities of Sollentuna, Upplands Väsby and Sigtuna. They have studied the faces of the criminals, read the previous investigations and mapped the media.
– We work a lot with intelligence and profiling. I want to emphasize that we are not profiling by ethnicity, but by time, place and behavior, he says.
Civil and uniformed police is on site during the night effort along with a representative of the Enforcement Officer who can collect the debts. During the night, suspicions arose that people connected to the Märstan network tried to hide a weapon when police showed up at the center earlier in the night.
– We know that slightly older criminals use young people to carry drugs and weapons. Some are not even criminally responsible or at least under 18, Karlsson says.
Photo: Roger Turesson
A couple of hours later, a uniformed patrol stops a car with some young people who, according to the police, have a connection to the network, they belong to the “queue” in police language. The driver and passengers are ordered to get out, the car is carefully inspected and searched. But there is no weapon there either.
When the night is about to Passing by tonight, civilian scouts find a half-map of Tramadol in the area that they believe someone dumped when police arrived. It is a highly addictive opioid, popular with young people. A tablet sells for twenty.
Contact is usually made through encrypted applications. Typical customers of Märsta vendors often buy cocaine or cannabis and usually live in the central town of Sigtuna.
– There are youth and young adults who often have a lot of money, says Lennart Karlsson.
Crime Prevention Council Statistics shows that reported drug crimes have increased by 41 percent between 2010 and 2020, compared to the first three quarters of years. The number of convictions for drug crimes increased by 34 percent between 2010 and 2019. In the last four years alone, the number of prison sentences for drug crimes has increased by 60 percent.
There is no unequivocal explanation for the figures. With 25 years of experience as a drug police officer and president of the Swedish Drug Police Association, Lennart Karlsson has several theories.
– I think the most important explanation is that there are more drugs out there, he says.
The number of seizures has increased both at the police and customs. Another sign that drugs have increased is that the police have noticed a more saturated drug market with lower prices. A wider range leads to greater competition between sales networks and therefore also increases the risk of violent conflicts.
Photo: Roger Turesson
According to Henrik Tham, an emeritus professor of criminology at Stockholm University, who has followed the questions for 40 years, it is difficult to know whether demand has increased because it is difficult to measure.
– We have no figures on that. We can look at school surveys that we have done for a long time. They show that the proportion who have tried drugs is relatively stable. However, there is a higher tolerance, younger people do not believe that it is so dangerous with drugs, he says.
According to the Crime Prevention Council Drug-related offenses belong to the categories of offenses in which the number of reported offenses is primarily the result of police recognition and intervention activities.
– If the police invest a lot, it will make an impression on the statistics, says Jon Lundgren, researcher at Brå.
Photo: Roger Turesson
Henrik Tham is on the same path, but he has a slightly tougher view of the work of the police: it is about increasing authorization figures and this is done more easily by prosecuting traffic offenses, drunk driving and drug offenses. .
– The police seem to be under pressure from politicians and it works. They take people with problematic drug use and take them more frequently to increase clearance numbers. That’s a reasonable hypothesis, he says.
With a change in practice of the Supreme Court in 2011 reduced the penalties for drug offenses and fewer were sentenced to prison. The government was not happy and then-Justice Minister Beatrice Ask appointed an investigation to re-toughen drug penalties. The result was the entry into force of two new criminal classifications in 2016: extremely serious drug offenses and extremely serious smuggling offenses with a penalty scale of 6 to 10 years in prison.
In practice, however, it means a reduction in sentence, according to Lennart Karlsson.
– It is conceivable that more people are sentenced to a shorter sentence, then there may be a risk of recidivism, he says.
Photo: Roger Turesson
According to Brå, who investigated the matter in a recent report, there is no evidence that this risk had increased after the change in practice in 2011. However, the sanctions have been shorter. In the early 2010s, the punishment in more than 30 percent of felony drug convictions was a prison sentence of more than four years, but for the past three years, the proportion has been around 25 percent.
In Märsta, car traffic is decreasing and few people move in after midnight. A final quest for a ladder awaits before the step ends this time. For Lennart Karlsson and his colleagues, the fight against drugs continues for another day.
The group hopes to work undisturbed in the future, without being forced to interrupt because the authority suddenly needs support in an emergency situation elsewhere.
– You feel exhausted when you say that it is a question of resources. But by 2020, the police have yet to get enough people out. I don’t know if it’s because we are undersized overall or because we’ve built too big an administration, says Lennart Karlsson.
