Five persons were robbed, two of them at gunpoint, within 15 minutes in Oslo’s trendy Grünerløkka district late Friday night. One of them was severely injured, and police report that a majority of crimes in the entire country occur in the downtown area encompassing Grünerløkka, Tøyen, Grønland and downtown south of Egertorget.
One man in his 60s was found with head injuries early Saturday after being robbed, and police believe the same two offenders were behind the string of assaults. They’re among the more than 200 reports of crime, some of it violent, that the Oslo police are recording every day.
Kåre Stølen, chief of the police station in Oslo’s Grønland district, told newspaper Aftenposten that just the crimes reported in the districts of Grønland and Tøyen account for 40 percent of all crime in Oslo. A few square kilometers around Akerselva in Oslo account for as many armed robberies as those that occur in the rest of the entire country, he said.
He and his colleagues are making a concerted effort to have more foot patrols and be more visible, in an effort to stem the crime wave, and he walks the beat himself. “Folks should be able to walk safely in the area every day, but we can’t manage to prevent all crime,” Stølen told Aftenposten.
newsinenglish.no staff
