- Hatred and threats have characterized much of the posts and in some cases they have been directed at individual police. This is totally unacceptable, ”says Mikael Damberg to Aftonbladet.
- You really have to see if some of these posts may also have been illegal.
Mikael Damberg is self-critical about the post. He thinks he would have explained more clearly that the police are actually entitled to take property, such as a jacket, if crime suspicions exist.
- This is something that is very often done by Swedish police and I have in fact never perceived that it has been questioned politically. On the contrary, I would like to say that one of our most important efforts now against gang crime is to beat the criminals' financial gains and status gaps, he says to Aftonbladet.
"Should have done differently"In the featured post, which was removed from Instagram, Mikael Damberg describes how the police seized a jacket from a person, suspected of drug crime, who could not prove that they bought the jacket. Statement has quickly drawn criticism on social media, including from lawyer Viktor Banke who called the post "provocative".
Mikael Damberg agrees that he should have expressed himself differently.
- The post was unclearly worded, there was a lot of speculation. Balancing is always difficult when you do not want to describe a single case too much and go into details. I think I would have done it differently, he tells Aftonbladet.
SVT News has sought the Interior Minister Mikael Damberg (S) who does not want to comment on the Instagram post.