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Sweden will do whatever it takes, including sending in the army, to end a wave of violence that has seen a string of deadly shootings, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in Wednesday.
Sweden's murder rate is relatively low in international terms, but gang violence has surged in recent years and Swedes are worried that the police are unable to cope.
In 2016, the latest year for which official statistics are available, 106 people were murdered in Sweden, a country of 10 million.
But Swedish TV reported there were over 300 shootings, mostly in turf battles between gangs over drugs, protection rackets and prostitution.
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Swedish PM Does Not Rule Out Use of Army to End Gang Violence
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Monday February 26 2018, @10:10PM
The article in the link is a tad short, and short on information to say the least. When they talk about sending in the Army (or the military) they are not talking about going in to do some kind of purge with special forces or just the army, even tho there are probably people that wouldn't mind that. There was suggestions from various political parties during the autumn to let the normal national police use the military police as a reinforcement as or when needed. Which technically wasn't new or impossible before, it had just been less of an issue previously. Which naturally sparked various kind of protests for various reasons -- among them being all of the loony identityleftwingers yelling about racism and whatnot.
What has been suggested is military police in the case of riots (which as noted is historically problematic, see below) and as investigative support (mainly this really). Also mentioned is to allow the police to use more of the military intelligence establishments for analysis work where crimes pass borders -- all the guns, drugs and grenades just don't show up from nowhere. Most of it comes from eastern Europe.
The reason grenades got so popular was/is that apparently having a grenade is, much, cheaper then getting a handgun (the upside of gun-control?). Also it was apparently something of a legal grey area that they had not bothered plugging since it had never really been an issue before (being in possession of this kind of military weapon was less severe then having an illegal firearm), that is getting fixed now ... or sometime "soon". Last time this was an issue was in the mid 90's during a 1%-MC-"war" when someone had stolen an anti-tank RPG and used it trying to blow up a Hells Angels club house during the so called Great Nordic biker war (1).
As noted this year is an election year, law and order is probably going to be one of the top issues combined with "what are we going to do with all the immigrants"-issues. So as the PM he probably does not want to have riots again this summer with the hoodlums throwing rocks (and other things) at police, the fire department and the other emergency services. He really doesn't want a repeat of a few summers ago (2013) and the car-bbq images was going on CNN around the clock as he is trying to be all fatherly and winning an election. I'm not sure if the other parties would mind as much since it would probably not hurt them as bad as they would hurt the current PM. Either way currently all the parties, that have any kind of realistic world views and claims to power, are trying to top each other on how much they want to spend on law and order issues -- how many more officers, how many more resources, harsher laws etc. The National chief of police was fired last month, or he was given an offer he couldn't refuse to step down and take another job. He was becoming a bit of a liability the PM did not want to have around as the election cycle was getting started. The new chief of police was recruited from the national secret service.
The main reason for not using the military previously, or why Sweden doesn't have a standing gendarmerie, is probably due to an even that took place in 1931 when the army put down a demonstration last time. They probably didn't want a repeat of that -- demonstrators throwing stones which was met by gunfire and death (2).
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Nordic_Biker_War [wikipedia.org]
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85dalen_shootings [wikipedia.org]