Thanked outside the metro

At Farsta station in south Stockholm, where a 2023 shooting killed two bystanders, locals now stop police commissioner Max Akerwall to say thanks.

“Good job!”

A decade of grenades

A quiet country spent more than ten years absorbing attacks by organised crime networks: automatic weapons, hand grenades and bombs, sometimes in daylight.

The peak was 2022

Networks fighting over the drugs market made shootings and bombings an almost daily event. Akerwall says that curve has now bent the other way.

“Sweden was experiencing a wave of violence in 2022 and 2023. But we've managed to reverse the trend.”

205 shootings down to 39

In the first half of 2022 police counted 205 shootings, 34 dead and 49 wounded. Same months this year: 39 shootings, eight dead, 15 wounded.

Bombings falling too

Explosions dropped from 108 in January to June last year to 75 over the same stretch this year.

New tools, new laws

Akerwall credits Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's government, in office since 2022. Tougher sentences for carrying a gun changed the maths for anyone thinking of arming up.

“In the past four years we've gotten many new tools, with new legislation.”

Both sides agree

The government promises to keep the crackdown going if it wins Sunday's election. The left-wing opposition backs the hard line too, so the policy survives either result.

Boots and cameras

In Ragsved, a police-designated vulnerable area with an open drug scene, officers patrol on foot while cameras on the facades record everything.

“All of these measures help to create calm, an increased sense of security in society.”

What residents notice

Greger Pettersson, 65, once had a shooting right outside his home and still never moved. Ahcene Oumeraci, a father of five, says the gunfire has stopped.

“You don't hear shootings anymore, there hasn't been that much lately.”

Hitmen recruited by phone

Bosses abroad hire kids on encrypted apps to carry out killings for cash, betting they are too young to prosecute. From January to July, 170 under-15s were suspected of violent crime.

“There are so unbelievably many young people being recruited on social media, on their phones.”

Chasing the bosses

Sweden now forces platforms to pull hitman ads, has scrapped softer youth sentences, and is hunting leaders overseas. Foxtrot's Rawa Majid is believed to be in Iran.

The deeper problem

With 17,000 active gang criminals and half a million people living under parallel justice systems, criminologist Sven Granath says the welfare state is the real defence.

“There will be fewer people inclined toward violence and criminal careers if society and the environment they grow up in is more secure.”