SFP Vice President Henrik Wickström believes Finland needs more police officers. According to Wickström, the Finnish Police lack resources for preventive work. In its election manifesto, SFP states that the number of police officers should be raised from the current 7,500 to 8,200.
“The police force is short on resources, even though the current cabinet has increased them. We need more officers if we want effective ways of fighting youth crime and family violence,” Wickström says.
“We have seen worrying developments in Sweden, where criminal gangs have got a strong foothold. This trend must be prevented in Finland. It would be important to create functioning, multi-professional efforts to prevent gang formation, and this requires preventive work from the police, among others.” “Anchor” teams have set a good operating model for supporting young people, and their operations should be expanded to the whole country,” Wickström says.
For Wickström it is important that the police can serve people in both Finnish and Swedish. He also points out that sufficient resources must be allocated to the administration of justice.
