After the havoc of the frigate KNM Helge Ingstad outside Bergen recently, the debate on women in the Defence Forces has blazed up. On Monday, Resett published an opinion regarding women in the police, which is another debated issue. According to one of the police sources of Resett, it is no implicit problem regarding female officers; rather, the problem is the devastating effect feminism characterising the methods of the police.
– I do not regard the average female officer as any problem. The problem is the attitude that some women have brought with them into the police, shifting the focus of the force. Lately, focus has shifted to crime that is maybe easier for women to focus upon; the victim being someone from an allegedly weak group, like hate crime, sexual abuse or ethnic profiling. It is, of course, essential to focus on arresting rapists, but one must not forget to fight other crime. Unfortunately, the focus on gang crime and organised crime has been backlocked, a police officer states to Resett.
The officer wants to be anonymous. He warns that the police have become a weathercock, letting it be forced to act in a certain way by politicised, biased actors. He points to reporting to the United Nations as a tool used by the Norwegian privilege organisations to press through their preferred politics. Resett has also earlier written about this.
– The police is being-clipped because one is pressed by a network of organisations where there are mostly women. These privilege organisations manage to press the police and also report to the United Nations in order to push through their view. This makes the police unable to perform their task. The average police officer is not to be blamed for that; there are heavy power structures not focused on the police as an authority, preoccupied with quite some different issues from you and me. The United Nations, Norwegian privilege organisations and the mainstream media set the premises for the police work in Norway. If, for example, the police does not focus on hate crime or use methods that these powers dislike we get the whole of this mechanism chasing us, the police officer says.
He portrays a hegemonic idea within the police about being as kind as possible towards the criminals.
– A predominant idea has been established that crime will go down as long as we have a dialogue with the criminals and are kind and do not discriminate. On the contrary, crime escalates when the police is not on the offensive. To be kind to the criminals does not help. There are so many who want to be criminals because it is lucrative and gives status in certain circles.
The police officer underpins that a passive police is exactly what the criminals prefer. Especially the risk of being discovered and get caught is frightening to the criminals. A less offensive police, then, is ideal as far as the criminals are concerned.
– One has to grasp the way of thought with the criminals. As it is now, our police is doing exactly what the criminals want from us. What will be appreciated by the criminal gangs? Of course, they want a police that leaves them alone and does not control them, a police that dismisses you once you get caught. Of course, they do not want an offensive police that searches, arrests and controls them. The essential is the risk of being discovered. When that risk diminishes it is good news to the gangs, the police officer says.
The criminals m must be removed from the streets, he specifies.
– It is about a failed preventive politics based on what would be the best to the culprit prior to the crime rather than what might be deterrent. Instead, one must focus on removing the capacity from the gangs by putting the hard-boiled criminals in jail.
He points to political and legal decisions that have made it more difficult for the police to do just that; reduce the capacity of the criminal gangs by putting them in jail.
– In 2014, the European Human Rights Court presented a sentence making it far more difficult to place people in a security cell. It seems like they think that the police places harmless, miserable people in a security cell, but that is incorrect. They do not grasp that they are protecting hard-boiled criminals. And then, one has restricted the option for the police to put recurrent criminals in remand. Nowadays, bank robbers are released from remand when the police has finished their investigation. Thus, we get more criminals at large in the streets, the officer states.
He dislikes identity politics, which he thinks paves the way for people to be oppositional, agitating, and hateful towards authorities like the police.
– The identity politics makes people to hate society, the established, and authorities like the police. That is the consequence of always focusing on how society has failed. It gets that way when one always explains away by saying, «the criminal is maltreated, he has no job, he is harassed by the police», and so on.
The police officer does not oppose the idea of female police officers; however, he argues that a certain degree of brutality is needed when one is fighting circles where brutality is the norm.
– The average female officer does not pose any problem. We must, however, have a masculine gang to meet extremely masculine criminal circles. In such instances the soft, feminine methods fail.
– You would say, then, that the feminism of the police poses a problem, rather than the fact that there are a few female officers?
– Yes. The feminism of the police poses a problem and not the average woman. Of course, meeting criminals with soft methods is a more feminine way. And it does not work. That is what provides us with all the hysteria regarding issues like so-called ethnic profiling. That stems from the focus on «soft methods». If we are not offensive and control, however, it will be difficult to fight crime.
This police officer welcomes female colleagues, but says that he considers it problematic when one starts quota based employment and equality of results. He thinks the most important thing is to have the best police officers, disregarding their gender.
– If you decide to have fifty per cent women and fifty per cent men, there is no doubt that some men who were better suited as police officers are surpassed by women. Alternatively, if one had said that one wanted the very best from the entire population, one would certainly have had the best suited from both genders. Of course some very good women would have come. It is when one begins to employ based on quota that it gets really difficult. Female police officers do not implicitly pose any problem. The main focus ought to be on the networks of organisations and the ideology that spoils the plans of the police regarding the fight against crime.
Translated to English by Lars Hoem