Curfews & law and order

25-Mar-2020

Dark, unpopulated nightlife areas
attract bored vandals.

Streets void of people at nighttime are known to attract all kinds of misbehavior. After a week of gastronomy curfew at 21:00 in the evenings, and after Oslo banned sales of alcoholic drinks last Saturday there are hardly any nightlife business open at all anymore. Not surprisingly, I noticed an increase in graffiti and tagging activity over the last few days. Quickly drawn tags on bar windows and doors started to spread all over the city centers - as should be expected when there is no one watching - and everybody stuck at home getting bored.
In police press talks in Norway and Sweden it was mentioned that the observations of  'organized burglar gangs' attributed to Eastern Europe that go on raids in Scandinavia  in order to fill their vans with expensive bicycles, cabin TVs and other valuables have considerably declined. Police seemed to presume they cannot cross the national borders anymore, like anybody else. I wondered whether those well-organized gangs would they not have warehouses in the country, now that the 'market ' was wide open.  There was a possibility for bias: The police has asked for internal border controls againt burglars in Sweden for years, so now hardly a week into them they certainly had conclusive confimative evidence already.

When I rode home from the center on by bicycle, I med a bicycle thief who on this bright afternoon in the lines of sight of both Oslo's town hall and the Norwegian Department of Defense, next to a serviced tram line, was disassembling an electric bicycle. It took me a moment to realize that it was most likely not his bicycle, but after assessing his wide selection of mechanic and power tools spread around on the ground it became very evident. From a few feets distance I addressed him, asking whether this was his bike. He just glanced at me and said "Yes!", resuming his effort to free the electric drive from the back wheel. I went around him, facing him from a safe-enough distance and asked him whether it was worth the effort, with noch much being left of the bike. "Yes, yes, not much left, will be done soon" he replied calmly with a clear Bergen west coast dialect of Norwegian while mindfully and calm like a Zen master proceeding with his task.

Mobile work: Bicycle thief with his tools on the streets of Oslo, disassembling an electric bike drive..

I considered my options, and while moving awayI took the photo. A short distance away I called Oslo's police office on their regular number for matters other than life and death. After hanging for three minutes into their voicemail, I hung up. I pondrered calling the emergency number, however there had been clear messages on the radio not to call it down with unimportant matters, since worried citizens these days call it with questions arising from anything between a cold and border passage rules. I decided to leave the emergency number for robbery, accidents and domestic violence.
Should I have intervened? Physically attacking a person in a situation other than rescuing lives is legally a difficult matter that may fire back. Approaching a person who is wielding sharp and heavy tools is not the smartest move either (in particular if he wields a power drill, as anyone knows who has seen the hilarious power drill shootout (from 1:16:00)  in the French-Norwgian Oil Zombie thriller Dark Souls ).

I decided to bike home choosing a route that will lead me by the Norwegian parliament, the central station, the Vaterland dope-selling square and the main police station, all while hoping to run into one of the patrol cars usually found around there to report the thief to.

There were no patrol cars, anywhere.

I mailed the photo to the police along with my summary of efforts to support law and order, and then  checked the local classified ad web pages for cheap electric bike drives, just out of curiosity.