Copenhagen Post, March 16, 2011

Copenhagen police established a stop and search zone in Nørrebro on Monday following a week of gang-related gunfire.

The stop and search zone affected most of Nørrebro out to the northwest suburb of Tingbjerg and was a direct result of last week’s “apparent intensification of gang fighting,” explained the police. Similar stop and search zones were established last week in the suburbs of Tingbjerg and Husum.

Police will now be “massive and visible” from Nørrebro out to Tingbjerg and will also be visiting schools in the zone.

Late last Sunday evening, a 19-year-old Danish man named Zoubir Aoussar, was killed by a single shot to his back near Blågards Plads square in Inner Nørrebro. Three assailants pulled up in a grey Mitsubishi and came out shooting, according to police. The car, which was stolen, was found burnt-out in Kongens Lyngby on Tuesday.

“It is almost certainly gang-related, because of both the time and place, as well as the way it was done,” the lead investigator Kenneth Vesth told TV 2.

A few days earlier, on Thursday, March 10, a 19-year-old man of Somalian heritage was shot and killed in the Copenhagen suburb of Husum in a drive-by involving an automatic weapon. An 18-year-old and a 22-year-old were wounded but survived.

On Monday, March 7, a taxi with three passengers was shot at in another drive-by. No-one was hit in that incident.

The cases are being handled by the Copenhagen police force’s special gang unit.

“We know there has been a lot of tension between the different immigrant gangs the last couple of weeks, so that’s the direction we’re looking right now,” Knud Hvass, the deputy police commissioner, told Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

In the early hours of Monday, March 14, Task Force East, the Copenhagen Police, the North Zealand Police and the National Police conducted a major dragnet in the Copenhagen area, ransacking 43 different addresses and arresting six people.

The round-up occurred just seven hours after the killing on Blågårds Plads square, but was part of the “general effort against the gangs”, according to Lars Borg, press manager for the Copenhagen Police. A loaded pistol, a kilogram of hash and approximately 200,000 kroner in cash were confiscated.