How the Swedish are beating Muslim Crime Gangs. By James Rothwell in The Telegraph.
Famed for its openness and slower pace of life, Sweden is one of the last places you might expect to see children being pulled off the streets and searched without a warrant, or having their phones spied on by detectives.
But after four years of gang violence that has seen children as young as 12 recruited on social media to carry out hit jobs against rival gangsters, police say it has become a grim but necessary reality.
In April 2024, Swedish police were handed sweeping new powers to tackle the rise of Middle Eastern drug syndicates that were grooming boys and girls into being “foot soldiers” by offering them up to 150,000 kroner (£12,500) per job.
Across Swedish cities, officers now have the power to stop and search people — including children — and vehicles without specific suspicion of a crime …
Children under the age of 15 can also be placed under phone and internet surveillance by police if they are suspected of serious crimes, such as being involved in gang assassinations or bomb making.
It’s working:
Two years on, the laws — which had prompted outcry amongst liberals — are working. Sweden has seen the biggest decline in gun violence since the crisis began in 2022, according to the latest data.
The number of shootings in Sweden fell by 63 per cent in 2025 with 147 last year compared to a peak of 390 in 2022, when narcotics gang Foxtrot began a major, deadly power struggle with its rivals
Murder and manslaughter rates have also fallen to their lowest level in a decade, in a country that recently suffered from the second-highest gun-related death rate in the European Union. …
Surprise success of the bleeding obvious — let the police do their job:
Arrests of senior Foxtrot members in the Middle East, anonymous witness testimonies and the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 13 have also been credited with the major decline of shootings.
Yet it is the safe zones’ success that is perhaps the most surprising element of Sweden’s achievement, considering how grossly unpopular they were among campaigners and rights groups. Civil liberty campaigners had warned against the racial profiling of civilians, while the United Nations called the measures “repugnant and illegal”.
In virtually all cases, Sweden’s safe zones target neighbourhoods where residents come from a migration background, as this is the main recruiting pool for Foxtrot gangsters who seek out alienated youths who are easy to manipulate.
Under the new scheme, officers are allowed to pick out children based on clues that they might be involved in a gang, such as wearing clothing brands associated with that lifestyle. …
“Some were scared that it would be a form of discrimination, but what was interesting was that most of the people who live in these areas have a foreign background, and they responded positively to it,” Carin Götblad, a police chief in Stockholm, told The Telegraph.
Of course, this approach depends on having an honest police force.
hat-tip Stephen Neil