The King's Garden

So it's three in the afternoon. People are walking around with light clothes, happy faces and everyone has their sunglasses on. While on our way to sit in a park with the fantastic italian ice cream melting in our hands my friends and I notice a few white and flourescent yellow police motorcycles buzz by. Then the street becomes entirely empty save a motorcade of three black SUVs and more of the white and flourescent cop bikes, now blocking the intersection. My friends and I look at each other as the motorcade rolls on by, cop bikes whizzing around and past it. And what could possibly be so important that three black vehicles need a fleet of police bikes as an escort? We have no idea. The body guards looking out from the windows on the vehicles all look like agents from The Matrix, black sunglasses and all. After a moment the white and flourescent yellow cop bikes blocking the intersection zoom ahead and the traffic floods back into the street and everyone goes back to looking happy in their sunglasses.

Being able to cross the street again we come to the park and sit down in a sort of circle made out granite ledges that people are sitting on. In the middle stands a tower-like sculpture with steps and more people. Some temporary tents that a few construction workers were setting up also stand in middle, which wouldn't be of any consequence exept for the apparent deal that was going down right there, apparently turning very messy. An argument breaks out in the middle of the circle over the contents (or lack of contents) of a backpack.

It wouldn't have been a such a big deal if it hadn't been for the other two groups of young guys sitting on two seperate ledges. The two arguing walk away from the tent area in the middle and we think it's all cool again and everyone can go back to being happy in their sunglasses when one of guys jerks his arm back and smacks the other guy in the face with his elbow. The apparent victim makes a retreat back to his crew while the other makes a go for the nearest trash bin, rummages around and digs out a glass bottle. Everyone else is sitting around in the circle, quite calm in their sunglasses and my friends and I start to discuss that it would be a good idea to make an emergency call then and there. Children are playing and laughing, people are sitting and talking, the construction workers are busy putting up the tents with big aluminum poles, two big groups of young guys are watching a deal go sour and then garbage man ditches the bottle for a nearby pole.

One of my friends makes the call.

"There's a fight in Kungsträdgården", she says while garbage-man takes a swoop at his mark. Ditching the pole he then makes a round to every garbage can and we decide to bounce before he reaches us. Most just sit there and the tent workers seem to go on without noticing what was going on.

"Besides the two that are fighting it's pretty calm, but their friends are right there and it looks like they might join in any time. I don't know, but there are kids playing around here, can't you just send a car?"

"They said it's not serious enough", she says while shaking her head.

Escorting a foreign dignitary with more than a dozen cops to block off rush-hour traffic in the middle of the city is evidently much more important than staving off a possible drug-fueled gang fight in a populated public park. A few minutes later we throw away our sticky paper cups and plastic spoons and notice a white and flourescent yellow motorcycle creep it's way into the park and by that time we only hope that more people have called instead of just looking happy in their sunglasses. Later that night we find out that someone gets stabbed in the park. But apparently it's not serious enough.

Experience shows once again why the swedish police need some stategy changes. I say once again because while Sweden and Stockholm are in many ways wonderful places to live and work, being a relative plethora of social benefits, the legal system and police force are in dire need of lessons in not being jackasses. You could devote an entire blog alone to why the swedish judicial system hasn't left the nineteenth century in their rulings on rape cases. You have to wonder exactly what our tax money is being spent on and what's serious enough.