On Sunday night two masked youths, connected to the immigrant gangs that are fighting out a turf war with the Hell's Angels, attacked a pub on Amager in Copenhagen. They forced a man to lie on his belly at gunpoint and then fired 10 shots into the pub, killing one and injuring two, before shooting the man on the street in his kneecaps. The incident is the third in as many days. On Saturday night a 32-year-old man trying to park his car on his way to a concert was shot by youths on bikes, and on Friday another random victim, a young man, not connected to any of the involved groups, was shot and had his throat cut in execution style at an estate in Copenhagen's troubled Norrebro area, probably by people connected to the AK81 supporters of Hell's Angels.The gang war has been pasteurising life in the Danish capital for far too long. The police have tried to control matters, but rather than being solved, the problems seem to be escalating and the locals are increasingly staying indoors or even moving out of the trouble spots. Normal Copenhagen residents fear being mistaken for a gang member by stressed criminals worried for their own safety. The number of casualties unrelated to the various groups is rising dramatically.
The Danish minister of justice, Brian Mikkelsen, insists that the fight against the gangs is being won, but it certainly doesn't feel that way walking on Norrebro in central Copenhagen on the weekend. The atmosphere, in an area usually full of people in shops and cafes, is tense – the locals just want the problems and the criminals to go away.
The Danish integration minister, Birthe Ronn Hornbech, is now contemplating the introduction of a new set of laws that will in effect mean that all foreigners caught committing a crime involving a weapon will be expelled from the country. The proposed policy is supported by the rest of centre-right government and the Danish People's party, and therefore looks likely to be passed in parliament. But several experts have warned that the new zero tolerance strategy is risking institutionalised inequality. While the tough line might have some effect on the immigrant gangs, it could easily be seen by the Hell's Angels as giving them the upper hand and reason to start an offensive.
Danish police have increased their presence in the Copenhagen trouble spots, but so far they have been hapless bystanders. The gang war is being fought between two factions fighting for control of the lucrative drugs market. But, for all the shootings and stabbings, the real victims are the local residents. It is strange that it should take dozens of episodes with firearms and several deaths before the police are willing to upgrade their presenceThe ongoing gang war, with its clear ethnic tensions, has done little to better the already strained relationship between white Danes and foreigners. But while the Hell's Angels and their supporters are a clear and relatively easily defined group, the immigrant gangs are less well known. It is them the Danish population fear the most. But these gangs do not represent the foreigners in Denmark, they just give them a bad name. While there is every reason to clamp down on the gangs' criminal activity, legislating one's way out of trouble is often not the answer. If a white boy gets a small prison sentence for carrying a weapon while a foreign boy is expelled for the same crime, surely that is bound to make the foreigners feel even more stigmatised. The question then remains: what to do? Few in Denmark seem to have a clear idea. The original plan was to let the gangs fight it out, but that now seems a far too dangerous proposition for the rest of the Danish population.
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