Response to interpellation 2022/23:149 on measures for more police in Stockholm

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! Good morning! Mattias Vepsä has asked me what measures I and the government plan so that more people will want to work as police officers in Stockholm.

Sweden shall be a safe country to live in. This presupposes a strong justice system and accessible police. As stated in the government bill, the Police Authority shall receive more employees with higher salaries during the mandate period. The goal is that the police density shall at least correspond to the average in the EU.

The Government has therefore tasked the Swedish Police Authority to report on which measures need to be taken to reach the goal of a police density that at least corresponds to the average in the EU. The report shall state which measures need to be taken, by whom and at what point in time, as well as what conditions must be in place for the goal to be reached as soon as possible. The assignment shall be reported by March 31 this year at the latest.

In addition, the Swedish Police Authority has been allocated special funds to be used for increased salaries and other compensation in order to strengthen the attractiveness of the police profession.

I share the interpellant's view that the police density in Stockholm needs to increase and that it is crucial for achieving better results and increasing safety. With more resources and better tools, there are also legitimate expectations from the citizens that the expansion of the police leads to increased police presence and improved results.

For the government, it is important that the Police Authority maintains a purposeful police presence based on the local problem picture throughout the country, both in large cities and in rural areas. In the regulatory letter, the government has mandated the Police Authority to specifically report on how the authority has freed up resources in favor of the core police operations.

It is of course not long-term sustainable for police officers from other parts of the country to be moved to work in Stockholm for an extended period. To ensure a high police presence throughout the country, it is therefore important that police region Stockholm has a correct dimensioning and a capacity to sustain its own operations.

The Swedish Police Authority has, since 1 April 2022, introduced a monthly fixed salary supplement to all police officers who are stationed in Stockholm and have a monthly salary below 36,000 kronor. The purpose is to attract more police officers to Stockholm and retain the police officers who already work in the Stockholm area.

In summary, I can assure Mattias Vepsä that the government will follow up on how the resource situation in the Stockholm police region develops and also work for increased police density throughout the country.

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Mattias Vepsä (S)

Mr. Speaker! I thank you for the answer.

I see exactly as the minister does the need for increased police presence throughout the country. We are therefore in agreement to allocate more resources to the police.

The previous government, as is well known, made major investments so that we would get more police officers as well as wage increases. We implemented a number of legislative changes to obtain more effective tools and opportunities to combat serious crime. We opened more training places across the country. In short, it was a historic expansion of the Police Authority, and Sweden has more police officers today than ever before.

It is important to continue the work together across the block boundaries. We are happy to join forces with the government to reach the high-set police goals. We also want to increase the number of police officers. We have another set goal, of 50,000 additional police employees by 2032.

In the Minister's response, I hear about specific salary initiatives. This is important to increase the profession's attractiveness. I also appreciate that there is a clear mandate for the authority to return later this spring with a timetable and measures to increase the number of police officers across the entire country. But I think that perhaps there are already some ideas that the Minister wants to share here in the chamber. Are there clearer answers on how and when we can get more police to specifically Stockholm? This is very close to my heart, as I am a Member of Parliament from this constituency.

I also believe that while we succeed in ensuring the police presence during this period with an increased pressure in our city and our region, we also succeed in ensuring the police presence in the rest of the country. The Minister may have some announcements to make on how the government ensures the police presence in the rest of the country during this operation.

I have had several meetings and conversations in recent weeks with both police and other actors throughout society. That is how it works when you are a politician in Sweden. One does not just sit here in the chamber. We and our colleagues travel around the country and meet actors in different ways. One thing that most agree on is that there is concern over the situation we have had since New Year's Eve with increased explosions and shootings, and over the fact that more and more young people are being lured into serious crime.

Many in the debate highlight just the dark side. But let me point out some glimmers of light. After the specific incident and with the extra resources that the police now have, more have actually been apprehended. As recently as yesterday, it was reported in the media that the situation looks a bit better. Even if it might be a bit more of a pause, we still know that the situation can change and that one, if we do the right things, can achieve quite a lot.

I have picked up on some questions over the last few weeks and would like to hear what the Minister has to say about them. There is a proximity between the police in Stockholm and the national police. How can one ensure that more choose to stay longer in local police work before they perhaps choose a job at the national police? What general paths does the Minister see to facilitate more people applying to specifically Stockholm and choosing to work here as a police officer?

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Mattias Vepsä, for the question and for this contribution!

We fully share the ambition that the police should grow. The Government has presented a very ambitious growth target. That we are to reach the EU average means, roughly speaking, that we are to go from today's approximately 200 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants to 300 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants. It is an extraordinarily ambitious growth target.

It is true that the police have grown in recent years as a result of large economic investments, which not least this chamber pushed forward during the last mandate period in relation to the then-sitting government, but that there has been no growth in Stockholm since 2015. There are fewer police officers net today than in 2015 in Stockholm. One can therefore say that the investments made during recent years have not resulted in any police growth in Stockholm. That is our current situation.

Regarding wage increases, they are naturally an important part of creating attractiveness in a profession. If we are to describe the history correctly, those investments were something that the previous government was very hesitant about, but which the Riksdag pushed through. A targeted, specific wage increase was made for police officers that was extraordinarily important and which created room, not least in Stockholm, for targeted wage increases for police officers in lower income brackets. That investment also created incentives to be out in field service, for example. It is incredibly important that the growth of police officers occurs in the meeting with the citizens.

If one broadens the question regarding attractiveness, I believe there are partly general issues and partly Stockholm-specific aspects. Generally speaking, it is of course about the conditions – everything from salary to other employment conditions – but one factor that I believe is completely decisive is that one in the capillaries of the operation experiences that they have the prerequisites to do a good job that achieves results.

It concerns the entire chain. It is about which tools are provided to the police - and in that regard, we are far ahead with more fixed surveillance cameras, increased opportunities for secret wiretapping, and removing confidentiality rules between authorities. All such things provide increased opportunities to prevent crime, and when crimes have been committed, it gives the police and other judicial or law enforcement authorities reasonable conditions to fulfill their tasks.

A great frustration that I encounter among many police officers is that when they have succeeded in their task, they perceive that the consequence in later parts of the system is not strong enough. Those who have committed crimes are not locked up - or are locked up for too short a time - and are soon out again and can commit new crimes. Everything is connected, from the tools to the punishments. I do not believe that the police profession differs from other professions in that regard. One must be given the conditions to do a good job. Then one can also imagine becoming a police officer and staying longer in the profession.

In Stockholm, naturally, special conditions apply. Mattias Vepsä was aware of the competition from other employers within both the police and the business sector and other parts of society. This creates a specific competitive situation. It is also a reality that the workload in Stockholm in many ways is more demanding than in other parts of the country, in any case in smaller towns. But here there are also great opportunities when it comes to attractiveness. I shall have to ask to come back to that in a subsequent contribution.

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Mattias Vepsä (S)

Mr. Speaker! There were many threads in the response, and I intend to add another one in this debate. I perceive, however, that we Social Democrats are indeed in agreement with the government on a number of the measures that Gunnar Strömmer highlights, which concern more tools and a review of how the sentences should look and what consequences should apply.

A number of legislative tightenings were already made during previous mandates. We have come a bit of the way, and there are some government bills ahead of us to take a position on in detail. But it is clear that there is a distinct dividing line between our political parties. One hears quite one-sidedly from the Moderaterna and the political right that the solutions to all our problems are to tighten the penalties and obtain even more repressive tools. We have an interpellation debate shortly after this regarding visitation zones, which I understand is one of the minister's favorite tools.

I want to point out another side of the problem of getting more people to live, reside and work as police in Stockholm. We already saw during the previous mandate period, when a bourgeois majority ruled City Hall, that fewer apartments were produced in our city, for example. We saw a paradigm shift in the government's housing policy when they pulled the rug out from under those who could produce cheap rental apartments.

The investment support that existed before has been criticized by the government, which said that the old government only had one tool to get more housing. But it was a tool that actually provided more rental apartments at a reasonable rent. In our region, Stockholm, it now means that 3,500 homes will not be built. This is happening in a recession, and one could have a different debate with a different minister about how it affects our social economy. Today, it is about how more police officers can live and reside in Stockholm. In that case, the possibility of finding housing is central.

The government has an ability to see parts of the problems but perhaps not always the whole. When they point with one hand that more police are needed and with the other hand withdraw the state's only tool to stimulate the construction of more affordable housing, I wonder if the government really understands the effect of its policy.

The question is in what way exactly that effort facilitates the construction of more affordable apartments. It has also resulted in several police officers being relocated. The Police Union has repeatedly highlighted the issues surrounding moving to Stockholm. How does the government plan to facilitate so that more police officers can live and reside in our region?

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! Mattias Vepsä argues that the government only sees parts of the problem. I perceive that a larger problem might be that Mattias Vepsä listens a bit selectively to what I have to say.

First, I described various aspects of the problem very broadly. They naturally also affect the attractiveness of the police profession, but then linked to society's ability to crack, for example, serious organized crime. There, sharper tools for the police and prosecutors were undoubtedly needed. I mentioned some of them. Removing secrecy barriers is not a harsh measure in the sense that it is only about convicting and imprisoning people for longer periods. It is also an extraordinarily important measure to prevent and stop crimes from being committed in the first place.

A better exchange of information between the police, school, and social services is absolutely crucial to break the development regarding, for example, the provision of very young people who engage in bombings and shootings. It is a development that we have recently seen, not least in Stockholm.

There is, therefore, an enormous breadth in the perspective, and I mean that all parts concerning the ability to solve the task, for example, the organized crime, also have a direct link to the attractiveness of the professions that are closest to these major societal problems.

The broader question concerns Stockholm and the conditions here. I am a resident of Örnsköldsvik at my core and therefore come from a smaller town in the countryside. There are surely other cities in Sweden that want to claim to be real large cities, but by international standards, Stockholm is probably the only city in Sweden that can be called truly large. This implies specific challenges, including what concerns the occurrence of socially vulnerable areas—furthermore over a large area and in different directions—and that it is here that the state leadership and the national political institutions are located. Terror threats are most often directed at a country's capital.

Simply put, one can say that the complexity of the police task is something quite extra in a city like Stockholm. On the other hand, I believe that a good deal of the potential attractiveness of the police profession also lies in that. The complexity of the big city implies great professional challenges in a positive way. I believe it is very important to carry that with you. What naturally implies great strain is also what fundamentally creates a very interesting and developing work environment.

Then there is no doubt that another aspect of this is the high cost of living in Stockholm. I have also heard the housing issue addressed, even though I perhaps have not yet in my four months heard the Police Authority or individual police officers express any enthusiasm for the investment support that Mattias Vepsä took up. How to create conditions in a long-term way for the construction of more housing in Stockholm and elsewhere is naturally a question that also affects the living conditions for a police officer.

Municipalities naturally have the opportunity to discuss directly with the police in Stockholm and elsewhere if they wish to cooperate regarding housing and other matters. This also happens in various places. However, it is a matter that lies outside the government's domains. But I urge all municipalities to have such dialogues with the local police.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Mattias Vepsä (S)

Mr. Speaker! I thank you for the answer. I appreciate that the Minister sees the complexity in our region. Different parts of the country have different challenges. In our city, higher living costs and more expensive rents are a real challenge.

Much responsibility, of course, lies at the municipal and perhaps also the regional level to plan and ensure that housing is built. But I do not believe that one should underestimate what a state, national housing policy can do so that we can get staff to the welfare sectors and so that more police officers can live a good life, even if they choose to do so in just Stockholm, which has higher living costs.

This debate has branched out a bit. I have taken away very many interesting threads to follow up on and return to the chamber to ask follow-up questions about. We will see at what pace the government delivers propositions during the spring. Some, as mentioned, are already in front of us in the Committee on Justice, and we will have specific debates on more tools for the police.

At one point, I hope that the Minister for Justice and the government will come back, and quite soon, namely when the report from the Swedish Police Authority arrives, which is to contain ideas and an action plan to get more police officers and reach the police goal we have in Sweden. I want to emphasize that we need more police officers here in Stockholm. It is very important so that the entire city can feel safe. But it is at least equally important that we have police officers in every municipality and in every location around the country where there are currently no police officers.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! I thank Mattias Vepsä for his concluding speech.

Let me take the opportunity to also say something about the developments of the past few months in Stockholm. This occurs in the light of a development that, unfortunately, has been ongoing for a very long time. We closed 2022 with a very dark and gloomy record of 62 fatal shootings in Sweden, to compare with 4 in Norway, 4 in Denmark, and 2 in Finland. That says something about how far and deep this terrible development has gone and penetrated into our society.

With that said, enormous efforts are being made by the police to mobilize in the acute situation to push back the latest wave of violence. I have personally visited police officers in many different places in Stockholm during this time: Skogås, Vällingby, Södertälje, Huvudsta and also other places. I would like to take this opportunity to extend a big thank you to all the police officers in the field who are making heroic efforts in Stockholm and who also, as Mattias Vepsä pointed out, have succeeded in pushing back a large part of the wave of violence we have now seen.

It is really not broken. But with the mobilization that has occurred in Stockholm with the support of police from other parts of the country, an enormous amount has been done to prevent and preclude new crime and also to create the conditions to solve the serious shootings and explosions that we have seen.

I would like to return to the question of how the police in Stockholm can grow. There is no doubt that it is important for the police to grow throughout Sweden. The government has, as stated, given a mandate to the Police Authority based on a very ambitious growth target. However, there is also no doubt that Stockholm has had specific problems and until now has not constituted a part of the police growth in Sweden. That must be changed, and there we can certainly cooperate further.

The interpellation debate was hereby concluded.

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