"Thought it was a school shooting in progress"

Shortly after the fall semester started, some 14-year-old students at the Mariaskolan in central Stockholm would do school work. One of them put on a suit and an automatic weapon in plastic and was filmed by his friends on the street opposite the school. A passerby saw the youth, feared the worst and alarmed police.

- Then it was in a hurry. An armed person near a school, I thought this might be an imminent school shooting. So seriously we look at it, says Evelina Molander, who was a regional intervention leader.

Evelina Molander requested all resources she could get and patrols from all over the Stockholm region were connected.

Police Emma and her colleague were first in the scene and saw the suspected school shooter on hold.

- Then my heart jumped and I became very focused. We shouted “Police! Let go of the weapon! ”, Emma says.

- Then the person did exactly as we said, put his weapon on the ground, backed away from it and sat down on the ground.

Afterwards, Emma has often thought about how close it was.

- Such events really make you reflect afterwards. Just this time it ended well, but it might as well have ended in a completely different way, she says.

Police chief Evelina Molander says police are meeting another society today, with many illegal weapons in circulation.

- Criminals hide them in bushes, in playgrounds or in garbage rooms to be able to retrieve them quickly. This means that anyone can get a sharp weapon by mistake, which makes our assessments so much harder. It is not possible to look at a person whether it has a sharp weapon or not, and we cannot chance, she says.

Many people believe that just because replicas are legal there is no danger. It is also believed that there is time to explain to the police.

- But in these situations, things usually go very fast, says Evelina Molander.

A few weeks after the incident at the Mariaskolan, police in the South region shot sharply at some men who were recording a music video in Malmö. And this summer, the Stockholm Police intervened against actor Adam Pålsson when he was recording a scene in Stockholm.

This week's crime on Thursday addresses the problem of weapon-like objects and examines whether it is possible to see the difference between a genuine and a false weapon. Hear the police officers Evelina and Emma who thought they were alerted to a school shooting and the police who shot sharply in Malmö tell for the first time.