A Norwegian police chief has spectacularly broken ranks to express his professional opinion that high and sustained levels of crime committed by migrants more than justifies concern about foreigners, and that increasing immigration “leads to more rapes”.

Writing in response to an opinion piece by a philosopher in the Norwegian daily newspaper Haugesunds Avis, Police Inspector Thomas Utne Pettersen argues that while he agreed that rich nations like Norway had an “ethical and moral obligation” to help those in need, those wary of foreigners were not misled.

Justifying his point with the catalogue of regular migrant crimes that police have to deal with daily — even in a nation like Norway where significantly fewer migrants have come compared to places like Sweden and Germany — the officer said he disagreed with scepticism of foreigners as being dismissed as mere cynics.

Expressing his view on the matter, Police Inspector Pettersen said: “People’s xenophobia in relation to this group is highly rational and justified”.

Validating his point, the senior officer said on his force in any given week in 2016 they might witness in the low-crime country “three Middle Eastern men in police custody” for drug offences, “foreigners” arrested for other drugs offences, stabbings, and robberies.

Pettersen said that in the year of 2015 he personally signed off 2,600 days of custody for detainees in his area — 2,200 of which were for “foreign men”. In one Norwegian prison — Ullersmo — he said half of all prisoners were foreigners, up from 30-per-cent in 2014.

The officer also blasted the number of Norwegian children who had been raped by migrants, including an “Afghan asylum seeker convicted of rape of a Norwegian child” and “three Syrian asylum seekers charged with the rape of two Norwegian children”. Reinforcing the point, he cited a study in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, which found that “9 out of 10 who are convicted of violence against children have an immigrant background”.

Perhaps coming in for officer Pettersen’s most stinging criticism were the politicians who opened the doors to mass migration. Remarking that “Women and children are sacrificed on Asylum and Refugee Department’s altar”, he said politicians last summer had sought to “outbid each other” on how many asylum seekers the country could accept. He said if the politicians had been more rooted in “reality”, they would have seen long before that allowing more migrants would “lead to more rapes and other serious violations”.

On the coverup of migrant crime seen across Europe — notably in Germany, where local government in Cologne ordered reports be changed to hide the migrant nature of hundreds of attackers who molested and raped woman on New Year’s Eve and in Sweden where police no longer report the identities of criminal to avoid accusations of racism — the officer was scathing. He said: “The secrecy is in my opinion a betrayal of [the public]. The public has a right to know the challenges the police face — not to mention who commits most of the crime”.

Concluding, the Police Inspector said his primary concern isn’t xenophobia in Norway, but rather that “more people aren’t worried” about migrant crime and asylum seekers.