Swedish police officer Peter Springare has been reported to police and will likely be investigated after he said the country’s gang rape problem is linked to migration and was a “cultural phenomenon”.

Springare, who gained global attention after blowing the whistle on the extent of migrant crime in Sweden last year commented on the issue of gang rapes earlier this month claiming such attacks were “new” and were a consequence of the last 10 to 15 years of immigration policy, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reports.

“There are also ethnic Swedes engaged in group violence, but not in the same numbers as foreign-born offenders,” Springare said. The comments, which were recorded by broadcaster TV4, have since been reported to Bergslagen police who have announced that an internal investigation will likely take place.

The communications manager for the police in Bergslagen confirmed that the report would be passed on to internal investigators and said that Springare’s comments could potentially harm public trust in the police.

Others were far more critical of the remarks with Secretary General of Sweden’s Law Society Anne Ramberg commenting: “It is remarkable. All civil servants and most policymakers must have better judgement and adhere to our form of government and the value base it expresses. These statements are almost racist.”

Lawyer of migrant who filmed Facebook livestream rape in Sweden claims client "did Not understand" it was rape https://t.co/uVj3UplyJe — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 12, 2017

Last year, Springare blew the whistle on migrant crime claiming that almost all serious crimes were committed by migrants. Many at the time labelled Springare a racist for his remarks, to which he replied: “If you can’t discuss the problem of crime among immigrants without it being called racist propaganda, things are very bad.”

The accusations of racism went even further when police announced they would be investigating Springare for inciting racial hatred. The investigation was later dropped, but Springare was once again threatened with action as some claimed he had “hacked” into police computers to find statistics he used in a column for a local newspaper.

The levels of migrant crime are largely unknown in Sweden as the government has refused to publish official statistics for over a decade. Some websites that have published court data that shows whether a criminal is foreign-born, like the website Lexbase, have been censored by the government which claims the information should only be made available to lawyers, accredited journalists, and other professionals.