Denmark and Sweden police operate across borders to tackle gang crime spree
Malmö in southern Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark have faced escalating gang violence in recent years, which has intensified over the summer to the point where police from both countries are now operating across borders.
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00:00All appears idyllic here in Malmö, but under the surface, there's a less romantic truth.
00:05Police officer Glenn Schyggren works in Rosengård, a troubled suburb in Sweden's third biggest city, Malmö.
00:12They are renting, actually, killers from Sweden to do the killings in Denmark.
00:19And they're always young kids. It's cheaper. And if they get caught, they don't get that long sentence.
00:27Malmö in Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark have been hit hard over the last months with gang violence.
00:34Several people have been killed, and there's been even arson attacks and bomb attacks.
00:40Karoline Skull is the regional director in Malmö for YouthWork.
00:45The grooming on social media is a relatively big factor for why kids are coming into these environments.
00:55The cross-border crime between Denmark and Sweden has now resulted in police from Denmark working in Sweden and vice versa.
01:03We have to work very close to each other to shorten the ways of communication.
01:17This new approach where police operate on the other side of the border is not normal, but it's clearly needed.
01:23Because it is only 10 kilometers across the Øresund Bridge to the Danish capital of Copenhagen.
01:30And several attacks over the summer have been committed by Swedish gangs, or at least by young people who were hired by these Swedish gangs to do so.
01:39Carsten Norton, Denmark's most famous crime documentary writer, has covered the gang wars.
01:45It's quite serious. Within the last four months, according to the police, there have been at least 25 attempts on Danish soil.
01:53And Norton is not optimistic about the future of the gang violence in Denmark and Sweden.
01:59Earlier we talked a lot about the risk of the Swedish state coming to Denmark. Now it's already happened.