Swedish feeling about swedish police
As in France, we were working on the Svenska Polisen, we imagined it would be great to ask swedish passerbies their opinion on their police.
We wrote 4 questions to ask:
1. What's your opinion about the swedish police ?
2. Do you often see police on the streets ?
3. Do you feel safe ?
4. Do you think insecurity is an important theme in Sweden ?
In Sweden, Julie and I had spare time and decided to go interview people on the streets. We first splitted, in order to get the larger number of interviews possible. Such a strategy fastly appeared not efficient: indeed, only one Swede out of five answered our questions. Julie and I thougt it was because of our appearance: we wore unusual clothes, we had paper sheets in hands, that's to say we looked like people asking for money. In addition, according to my penfriend Jonathan Eriksson, the Swedes are not keen on speaking with strangers.
Then we tried together, but even if we could ask more people, it was not efficient. We decided to interview the differents members of our host families.
The biggest part of the interviewed people had the same way of answering, which we will present to you. Then we will give a few precisions, which were given by people who took time to answer. Each time we will compare the eventual good or bad points.
1. What's your opinion about the swedish police ?
♦ The police do it's job. We can have faith in the policemen, they are kind.
♦ Sometimes, the missions given by the politiciens are questionable.
2. Do you often see police on the streets ?
♦ Not often, apart during important events like celebrations (for exemple the May celebration), matches or concerts.
♦ Policemen and policewomen are on the streets when they or people need it.
♦ They are especially in cars.
♦ They don't need to patrol.
♦ They should be more present to talk to the population.
3. Do you feel safe ?
♦ Almost all the time, but not late in the night, because of imagination.
♦ Of course, some districts of the big cities make the passerbies feel unsafe.
4. Do you think insecurity is an important theme in Sweden ?
♦ It is something not important, exept for women who are afraid by the several rape affairs which were told by newspapers.
More pursued answers:
♦ The more policemen we see, the unsafer we feel.
♦ The nationalist party wants to increase the number of policemen on the streets.
♦ Security or insecurity is not directly related to the presence or not of the police. The main thing is the relations between the individualsof a society: in a small town where everyone know each other, people are helpful and ready to rescue someone who is endangered or in troubles. On the other hand, in a big city, people don't think they can help someone else. They imagine it's not their role, which is exactly the wrong way of thinking. For example, once, a man who had a faintness lied two hours long on the pavement before getting rescued. Someone even filmed people walking around him.
♦ It's difficult to choose how many policemen sould be on the streets. Politicians would have to listen to everyone.
To put everything in a nutshell, we can think Swedes don't feel unsafe in their country.
Adrien VASSEUR, 5th group.