Oslo police have arrested two young men, aged 19 and 20, and charged them with aggravated vandalism. The arrests come after three nights in a row of public disturbances and assaults on both police, security guards and firefighters during the weekend.
Newspaper Aftenposten reported that the police also ransacked the men’s homes on Tuesday. Both have police records and are suspected of being connected to the unusual violence of Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights on Oslo’s east side. Firefighters responding to various fires set in Oslo’s Vestli and Stovner areas were pelted with rocks, and a security guard’s car narrowly missed being hit by a 15-kilo stone dropped from a pedestrian footbridge. Police, who claimed that attack could have had fatal consequences, were also under assault when they responded to the incidents.
Aftenposten reported there had been a similar attack at Bjørndal on Oslo’s southeast side and police are taking the cases seriously. “I don’t fear Swedish conditions where police run when they’re attacked,” claimed John Roger Lund, chief of the police station for Stovner and Manglerud. “Here it’s the youth who run when we come. But first and foremost we want to use dialogue. This is a problem we intend to talk our way into solving.”
He’s determined to involve not just the youth but their parents and local community officials, to find out what’s causing the violence and to stop it. One of the two young men arrested on Monday underwent questioning on Tuesday.
newsinenglish.no staff
