If Dandy Don Meredith of Monday Night Football fame were alive, he would be singing, "Turn out the lights, the party's over." As our regular readers know, we have posted hundreds of articles on the sad state of affairs in Sweden. (Not that we don't have our own problems in places like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and many other once-great cities now plagued by out-of-control crime and leftist prosecutors who don't want to prosecute anyone whose name isn't Donald Trump.)
But this latest escapade outside Stockholm takes the cake. Let me set the stage:
Last year, a 17-year-old Armenian guy named Frunze Saghatelyan walked into a gym and started shooting. When the smoke had cleared, a Swedish man was dead, and the shooter was on the lam. While on the lam, the young Armenian guy qualified for and received Swedish citizenship.
It gets better.
Once captured, he was given a light sentence because he was under 18. The sentence? 2 years and 11 months. Apparently, however, this was too long for Saghatelyan, so one fine day (last Thursday), he complained of a toothache. So, accompanied by correctional officers, he was escorted out of the prison to a local dentist's office. At this point, Saghatelyan was freed by armed accomplices.
Wait. It gets even better.
Unfortunately, the correctional officers were armed only with some sort of mace or pepper spray, so they were helpless to stop it.
When interviewed that evening by Swedish media, the head of the correctional transport unit explained that had the officers been armed, the incident would have risked escalation.
The article in the conservative Swedish newspaper, Nyheter Idag, is translated by Fousesquawk. The only positive note here is that at least one Swedish paper is now publishing the photo and name of the escaped killer. Initially, the mainstream papers weren't even giving the name or description of the killer. Privacy, you know.
https://nyheteridag.se/kriminalvardens-transportchef-om-bevapnad-eskort-stor-risk-for-eskalering/
Correctional officer transport chief on armed escorts: "Great risk of escalation"
Joacim Trybom, head of the prison transport unit, says in SVT's Aktuellt that police escort or armed personnel to prevent armed releases of prisoners would risk an "escalation" between the justice system and criminal gangs.
On Thursday, the 17-year-old murderer, Frunze Saghatelyan, was freed by armed persons when he was being transported by correctional guards to a dentist in Södertälje.
Saghatelyan, who is an Armenian citizen and received Swedish citizenship while he was on the run abroad from Swedish police, was sentenced to juvenile custody for 2 years and 11 months for the murder of MED politician Fredrik Andersson at the Delat Gym in Stockholm in March of last year, as well as aggravated weapons offense and for bombing a restaurant.
The freeing of Saghatelyan is the second armed freeing in a short time, and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) called the freeing "scandalous" in the Parliament on Thursday.
"I think it is scandalous that a person who could take another person's life can simply walk away with the help of armed friends," said Kristersson, who asked himself what the correctional officers did and did not do.
On Thursday evening, Joacim Trybom, head of the correctional transport unit, participated (in an interview) with Aktuellt on SVT (Swedish State TV) regarding the freeing (of the prisoner) and said, among other things, that correctional personnel are only armed with OC spray, and therefore, can do nothing against armed liberators.
"We have OC spray as our weapon, but when someone shows up with firearms, we don't stand much of a chance of doing anything. As we stated earlier in the feature, our procedure for issuing firearms is considerably tougher than for our OC spray."
Trybom also says that they did not request a police escort for Saghatelyan's transport because they had no indications that a freeing operation was planned. The program Aktuellt moderator then asked if the freeing would have happened had there been a police escort.
"That is a good question. They might have been scared off or it could have gotten even worse. When both sides have weapons, there is a great risk of escalation," says Trybom and continues:
"In today's situation, there was no escalation and nobody was injured. But if we had had reinforcements with weapons, there would be escalation on both sides, and we don't know how it would go."
When Aktuellt asked about a suggestion from Richard Jomshof (Sweden Democrats) to arm correctional transport officers, Trybom said that would be "a very sharp escalation."
"There are other countries that have armed personnel when they conduct transports, so that is not an impossibility, but it is also a sharp escalation. I don't know if society is ready that we have personnel in a hospital or other facilities when we conduct armed transports."
*Update: Saghatelyan was arrested a few days later by Swedish police. He was discovered by chance when police conducted a drug raid. His accomplices are apparently still running free. No update on Saghatelyan's toothache.
No comments:
Post a Comment