The Swedish county of Dalarna is forced to employ over 50 civilian investigators due to a lack of officers available to carry out investigative duties, according to the head of the police department for the county.
Sweden has seen a rise in the number of civilian investigators, members of the public employed by the police to carry out investigative duties but are not officially trained police and have limited police powers, such as not being able to carry weapons or use force.
Police began hiring civilian investigators ten years ago but there has been a significant increase in the number of civilian investigators working alongside police across the country in recent years, broadcaster SVT reports.
Mats Lagerblad, head of the Dalarna police department spoke to the broadcaster on the trend saying, “Civilian investigators are important, partly to get the numbers up when we can’t recruit police officers. But above all, so that we can get other competencies, which makes us better.”
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“I see it as a very positive development, some of them are also supervisors and investigators,” Lagerblad said and added that some civilian investigators will be offered police training as well.
“The aim is that after the training they will return to their regular role as investigators, but also to have the police competence and powers,” Lagerblad added.
Despite the Swedish government promising in 2016 to recruit 10,000 additional police officers by 2024, some counties have struggled to fill police training classes. In December it was revealed that Dalarna county was only able to fill half of the police recruitment places for this year’s spring police training.
Sweden continues to face major challenges with staffing in police departments across the country and last month it was revealed that some officers now look for excuses to close cases rather than solve them due to a lack of manpower.
“It starts from those of us who take up notifications. Then we see a mentality that sometimes you try to find reasons for ‘how can we put this down for good reason?’ Instead of the opposite, ‘how are we going to solve this?’ This is a direct link to the fact that there are too few of us,” Gothenburg officer Peppe Larsson said.
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