I don’t know how the Swedish police operates, but I know that in my area, the police will most definitely respond to citizen concerns without ‘evidence’ being presented first, and I’m certainly glad of it. For example, not long ago I called the police to report a black van with tinted windows that’d been parked outside my house all day, with a guy sitting in the front seat who’d occasionally get out to take pictures of my house and write stuff on a clipboard. They didn’t ask for ‘evidence’, they just said “thank you, we’ll look into it”, and two cops drove up not long after, just like in the beard club situation.
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So who was creepy van dude in the end, then? Don’t leave us hanging…
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No idea! The minute the cops turned the corner, the van took off with a screech. That was several years ago and they never followed up. My best guess is that he was leeching my wifi or trying to monitor my internet activity. I put stronger security up after that weirdness.
Note to self: when surveilling a place, use a plain-looking car with a pinhole camera inside and watch wirelessly from a nearby cafe. The seats are more comfortable too. In the age of 4G networks, monitoring from an arbitrary distance is also possible, if realtime reaction is not needed.
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I don’t think that’s the same thing at all. People with beards, even 30 people with beards gathered on a hill < threatening than someone who is casing your house. There are far fewer explanations for why a person in a black van with tinted windows might be taking notes and pictures of your house than there are potential explanations for why those bros were gathered on the side of a hill. That’s not to say that police shouldn’t respond, but if it were just 30 guys without beards, additional information would have been required. E.g. are they drinking, do they appear to have weapons, are they causing a nuisance? We don’t just report people based on physical appearance, and police shouldn’t encourage that. In your case the guy was taking photos of your property and writing down notes
That doesn’t matter at all. The police respond to citizen alerts. They didn’t assume this was, indeed, a terrorist threat, as they only sent two police out to check. I think that making this into some sort of ridiculous social justice issue by insisting that the police in Sweden equate beards with terrorists is extremely silly.
In an area with a very low crime rate and a well-disciplined-citizen-responsible police force that is actually a most excellent and quite expected thing. (I am quite fortunate to live in such a place.)
Maybe you should refrain from passing judgement on those particular police until you have enough information to actually pass judgement. The word “sanctimonious” comes to mind.
If the Snowden leaks are anything to go by; do not involve a cellular connection in any nefarious scheme, if you can avoid it.
Doing so appears to be about as secure as doing it on the NSA’s wifi, and more expensive.
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Just imagine how much more scary and intimidating it would have been if they were 30 bearded gun-toting open-carry toddlers. With stacks of the latest issue of The Watchtower.
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