Mats Löfving | |
|---|---|
 Löfving in 2014 | |
| Born | 27 May 1961  Norrköping's Östra Eneby parish |
| Died | 22 February 2023 (aged 61) Norrköping |
Mats Olov Löfving (27 May 1961 – 22 February 2023) was a Swedish police officer, deputy director of the Swedish Police Authority. He served as chief of police of both Östergötland and Västra Götaland, and was appointed the next regional chief of police for Stockholm County and Gotland.
Born in Norrköping in 1961, Löfving joined the Swedish Police Academy and graduated in 1981, serving as a law enforcement officer in his home town. In 1988, he gained a law degree, and from 1995 to 1998 was the most senior officer of the Norrköping criminal investigation department. From 1999 to 2001, he was deputy head of the police unit at the Ministry of Justice. [1] In 2002, he was appointed deputy chief of police of the Östergötland County force and in 2004 became the chief there. With effect from 1 February 2009, he transferred to become chief of police of Västra Götaland County, commenting that he was taking on a bigger job and that it was healthy for Östergötland and himself to gain different perspectives. [2]
In November 2014, Löfving was appointed deputy director of the Swedish Police Authority (SPA) for a four-year term of office, and he also became the first head of the Police Authority's newly formed National Operations Department. [3] In October 2020, Löfving was appointed regional police chief for Stockholm and Gotland. [4]
Sweden has been known for its welcoming stance with regard to global refugees, but this came with increased challenges for the police. In January 2015 when he was deputy director of the SPA, Löfving responded to the 2014 mosque arson attacks in Sweden by assigning more patrols to the mosques, and by ordering greater discussion between the police and immigrant Muslim communities in Sweden. He said the SPA was cooperating with the Swedish Security Service and giving a higher priority to investigations of mosque attacks. [5]
In November 2019, Löfving set up a police task force named Operation Hoarfrost to counter a new wave of immigrant gang violence. The stated goal was to reduce shootings and bombings, to arrest gang members, to take weapons away from gangs, and to promote public safety. He said the problem was an "exceptional situation" requiring "special methods". [6] [7] Prime Minister Stefan Löfven expressed approval of Löfving's new task force. [6]
Löfving made headlines in September 2020, when he spoke out on Swedish Radio about the problem of immigrant family-based criminal gangs in Sweden, of which he said there were at least forty. He was quoted as saying that "Far from everyone wants to be a part of Swedish society" [8] and that some families had come to Sweden "solely for the purpose of organizing and systematizing crime", [9] bringing with them their own parallel systems of government. [8]
The Spectator reported Löfving's Swedish Radio interview as "a bombshell". [9] Swedish journalist Fredrik Haage remarked that, prior to Löfving's announcement, the idea that crime families were operating in Sweden was a "xenophobic conspiracy theory", but after the announcement, discussion was rising about the problem of immigrant crime. [10] Löfven pushed back against Löfving, saying "I do not want to link crime to ethnicity". [9]
Linda H. Staaf, head of the National Operations Department of the SPA, said that the family-based gangs in Sweden were composed of a combination of immigrants from three and four decades ago, and newly arrived immigrants who were determined to continue their criminal activities in Sweden.
On 1 February 2023, it was announced that Löfving had been served with a notice that he was suspected of gross misconduct in connection with having appointed Linda Staaf as head of intelligence at the National Operations Department in 2015, and for having assigned a service weapon to Staaf in 2020. An investigator, Runar Viksten, reviewed these decisions on behalf of Anders Thornberg and presented a report on 22 February 2023. He concluded that in four decisions concerning Staaf Löfving had been biased ( jävig ), but that there had been nothing wrong with the decision to give her the job. [11] [12] He found that Löfving had not made incorrect decisions, but that he had a conflict of interest, [13] and recommended that the national police chief should consider dismissing Löfving or removing him from his position. [11]
Löfving died on 22 February 2023, at the age of 61. [14] Police said they had been called out in Norrköping for an injured person who could not be saved. [13]
A senior police officer said that as it was not known for sure what had happened, the death had been classified as a suspected murder and a preliminary investigation had been begun. The initial call-out was a cardiac arrest alarm, and a police website says "The victim was Mats Löfving, who was found dead in his home in Norrköping". [15]
Gotland County is a county or län of Sweden. Gotland is located in the Baltic Sea to the east of Öland, and is the largest of Sweden's islands. Counties are usually sub-divided into municipalities, but Gotland County consists of only one county council, which also serves as a municipality, Region Gotland. Gotland County is the only county in Sweden that is not governed by a municipal council. The municipality handles the tasks that are otherwise handled by the county council: mainly health care and public transport. Like other counties, Gotland has a County Administrative Board, which oversees implementation of the Swedish state government. Both the County Administrative Board and the municipality have their seat in the largest city, Visby, with over 22,000 inhabitants. Princess Leonore, the daughter of Princess Madeleine, is Duchess of Gotland.
Norrköping is a city in the province of Östergötland in eastern Sweden and the seat of Norrköping Municipality, Östergötland County, about 160 km southwest of the national capital Stockholm, 40 km east of county seat Linköping and 60 km west of the Södermanland capital of Nyköping. The city has a population of 95,618 inhabitants in 2016, out of a municipal total of 130,050, making it Sweden's tenth largest city and eighth largest municipality.
Ylva Julia Margareta Johansson is a Swedish politician who has been serving as European Commissioner for Home Affairs and Sweden's European Commissioner in the von der Leyen Commission since 1 December 2019.
Crime in Sweden is defined by the Swedish Penal Code and in other Swedish laws and statutory instruments.
Lars Mikael Damberg is a Swedish politician of the Social Democratic Party. He served as Minister for Finance from 2021 to 2022. He previously served as Minister for Enterprise from October 2014 to January 2019 and as minister for home affairs from January 2019 to November 2021.
Tomas Morgan Johansson is a Swedish politician of the Social Democrats who served as deputy prime minister of Sweden from 2019 to 2022. He served as Minister for Justice from 2014 to 2022 and as minister for home affairs from 2021 to 2022, having previously served in that position from 2017 to 2019. He also served as Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy from 2014 to 2017 and again from 2019 to 2021.
The 2014 Sweden mosques arson attacks were a series of incidents all of which were initially believed to be arson attacks on three mosques in Sweden, that took place during one week at the end of 2014. In the third incident, in addition to being struck by a Molotov cocktail, the mosque at Uppsala was vandalized with racist graffiti.
On 22 October 2015, a mass stabbing occurred at Kronan School, a high school in Trollhättan, Sweden. 21-year-old Anton Lundin Pettersson killed three people and injured another with a sword, later dying from gunshot wounds sustained during his apprehension.
Soldiers of Odin is an anti-immigrant group which was founded in Kemi, Finland, in October 2015. The group was established in response to the thousands of migrants who were arriving in Finland amidst the European migrant crisis. They call themselves a "patriotic organisation that fights for a Finland" that wants to scare away "Islamist intruders" they say cause insecurity and increase crime.
On 15 May 2016, unrest occurred simultaneously in the Swedish towns of Norrköping and Borlänge, primarily in Million Programme Muslim-dominated public housing-areas, with stone-throwing against police and firefighters, car fires and arson attacks. The unrest took place across Sweden since late March. Public transportation was temporarily suspended in several areas due to stone-throwing against trams and buses. These incidents were mainly perpetrated by Muslim youths. These incidents were considered particularly notable as they represented the spread of unrest to outside the three major urban areas of Sweden. Across Sweden, more than 2,000 cars were set on fire between January and July 2016.
On the night of 21 January 2017, in Uppsala, Sweden, a group of three refugee Muslim men gang raped a nearly unconscious woman for around three hours and livestreamed the assault on Facebook. The stream was circulated on a closed Facebook group with around 60,000 members. Police were alerted the next morning on 22 January, when one viewer of the Facebook livefeed, who had initially believed the video to be staged, realised what was happening and phoned the police, who arrived at the apartment, where they found one of the men still filming and the woman still present. The case sparked outrage across Sweden and caused controversy about Facebook failing to report the crime and terminate the stream.
On June 18, 2017, Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old American girl from Reston, Virginia, was raped and murdered. The killer was Darwin Martinez Torres, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who was 22 at the time. He was indicted for Hassanen's rape and murder and subsequently pleaded guilty to four counts of capital murder, three counts of rape, and one count of abduction. In March 2019, he was sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the crimes. Police identified the murder as an apparent act of road rage, and not a hate crime.
General elections were held in Sweden on 11 September 2022 to elect the 349 members of the Riksdag who in turn elected the Prime Minister of Sweden. Under the constitution, regional and municipal elections were also held on the same day. The preliminary results presented on 15 September showed the government parties lost their majority, which were confirmed by the final results published on 17 September. After a month of negotiations following the elections that led to the Tidö Agreement among the right-wing bloc, Moderate Party (M) leader Ulf Kristersson was elected prime minister on 17 October. The Kristersson cabinet is a minority government of the Moderates, Christian Democrats (KD) and Liberals (L) that relies on confidence and supply from the Sweden Democrats (SD).
The second cabinet of Stefan Löfven was the government of Sweden from 21 January 2019 to 9 July 2021. It was a coalition, consisting of two parties: the Social Democrats and the Green Party. The cabinet was installed on 21 January 2019, following the 2018 general election.
Nils Kurt Erik Einar Grönberg, who was commonly known as Einár was a Swedish rapper. He released four albums, two of which topped the Swedish album chart. In 2019, he won the Musikförläggarnas pris for Breakthrough of the Year and in 2020 he won two Grammis, Sweden's oldest pop music awards. Two of his singles peaked at number one on the Swedish singles chart and four have been certified platinum by the Swedish Recording Industry Association (SRIA). He is also featured on the number-one single "Gamora" by the group Hov1.
Bombings in Sweden are attacks and sabotage using explosive devices by criminals in Sweden. The weapons used are weapons such as hand grenades and explosives intended for either civilian or military use. Legal authorities use the term allmänfarlig ödeläggelse genom sprängning and media in Sweden use the shorter term sprängdåd. This crime was not categorized separately prior to 2017. In 2018 there were 162 explosions, and in the first nine months of 2019, 97 explosions were registered, usually carried out by criminal gangs. According to Swedish police commissioner Anders Thornberg in 2019, there is no international equivalent to Sweden's wave of bombings.
Events in the year 2021 in Sweden.
Rolf Gustav Stefan Wirtén was a Swedish politician who held various ministerial posts, including the minister of economics and minister for the budget in the 1970s and 1980s.
Events in the year 2023 in Sweden.
Linda Hansson Staaf née Hansson is a Swedish author, and between 2015 and 31 December 2022 the intelligence chief at the National Operative Division (NOA)