Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

This paper examines two cases of the Swedish police working with intelligence concerning organized criminals preparing a large-scale robbery. One of the key issues in the paper is to describe how the police used certain intelligence information and to explain why. As is seen in the two case studies, a late intervention against organized criminals from the police’s part can lead to critical situations or the escape by the robbers. Dangerous situations, like a firefight, exposes crime victims, bystanders, police officers and criminals to potentially lethal danger; while a successful robbery where criminals escape with lots of money, functions as a motivating factor for future robberies.

When studied closely, the two cases show a few key differences, potentially vital to the outcomes of the heists. In the first case, the police work is more obviously intelligence-led: Here, the police had received information about a planned robbery of a cash depot beforehand and tracked the suspects closely. Despite this, the police occasionally lost the robbers. It was not until they started the robbery in the northern Swedish city of Umeå, that the police knew for sure what the robber’s final target was. The police had kept the target under surveillance and the Swedish National Counter Terrorism Unit moved in with a fierce fire fight as a result. In the second case, the police operation is mostly intelligence-initiated. In the spectacular helicopter robbery south of Stockholm, also in 2009, the police had been tipped off beforehand by foreign counterparts, but had failed to share the intelligence to the concerned parts. When the criminals landed a helicopter on a cash depot roof the police realized that a heist was ongoing. Late intervention forced the police to stand by while the robbers escaped with a huge sum of money.