A Swedish police officer is now being investigated for pointing out that migrants are responsible for many crimes in his country, but a retired senior colleague has also spoken out on the phenomenon and called out Europe’s open borders for increasing crime in the formerly peaceful nation.

Breitbart London spoke to recently retired Swedish police officer Torsten Elofsson in 2015 as his heavily resettled home city of Malmo was experiencing a serious spike in attacks committed by migrant communities with smuggled hand grenades.

The former INTERPOL officer and director of Swedish criminal intelligence division said the population of the city, which has been the first point of entry for tens of thousands of illegal migrants as they moved north through Europe into Scandinavia, had gone up by 50 per cent in two decades but the number of officers to police it had halved.

Senior cop Elofsson told Breitbart:

Sweden became a member of the European Union in 1995 and opened our borders. We are part of the Schengen treaty, so you have that freedom of movement which has also brought criminality here… Gun and drug related crime has definitely increased. Until recently the possession of guns by criminals was very rare – now finding people with firearms is a daily occurrence here… most of the guns we seize are used in criminal activity, are held illegally, and are smuggled into Sweden. Slovakia is very interesting right now – it is very easy to buy deactivated guns there but they are converted back when they are imported here.

Malmo is infamous for explosions. Yet thankfully nobody has been killed by the explosions yet – some of them are just used to frighten people. We had one case in Rosengard where a group were given a court order to leave an apartment because they were a disturbance for the neighbours. And then suddenly hand grenades and explosions outside the office of the real estate company.

Explaining the rise of populist, anti-mass migration parties like the Sweden Democrats Mr Elofsson said normal voters were starting to realise the rosy picture painted by centrist politicians didn’t tally up with their everyday experiences.

He said:

…the politicians, the media sends out a message that everything is safe and secure, you don’t have to worry. But people act according to their own experience – they see things, they experience things, they talk to their neighbours. And they feel the picture being presented in the media is not entirely accurate. Many people think the media and the politicians have merged together to make people believe that it is safe and sound to live here, and there are no problems. The media says immigration is always a positive thing because we have an ageing population and we need a young workforce to come from other countries. People don’t buy that picture 100 per cent. Living here you can see a lot of the crimes are committed by people originating abroad. Look at the unemployment here – you have 15 per cent in Malmo, which is twice the rest of Sweden. Of the number of people arrested and dragged into police stations, the majority are of foreign origin to be honest. There is an over-representation of violent crimes committed by people from other countries. But you can’t fool people. And that’s why the Sweden Democrats are rising. It was 25 per cent last week, now it is 27. There is a debate happening, you see all of the refugees coming… but we don’t have apartments, housing for them. How do we provide schooling for them? And then you see the costs. There is a feeling we can’t afford an influx of immigrants.

So-called ‘No go zones’ have been a hotly contested topic in the debate surrounding mass migration to Europe, with some activists strongly denying their existence. Whether the Swedish state admitted the fact or not, Elofsson said he’d experienced them in Malmo, and they made policing a more difficult job. He told Breitbart:

We have a number of no-go-zones in Sweden and they are expanding… police can go to these places, but you have to take precautions. Years ago you could go with two officers, no problem. Now you have to send four officers and two cars – if the fire brigade want to go, they have to take a police escort. They throw stones and try to stop the fireman from putting out fires. They sabotage the police cars. You can’t leave them unguarded – when you come back to it you find the windows smashed and the tyres deflated. It isn’t quite a no-go zone, but we have had to develop special routines to go there.

The comments last week of serving Swedish Police officer Peter Springare, made in an exasperated Facebook post about what he called a clear link between migrants and crime levels are all the more unusual for having come from a serving officer. While he is now under investigation by his own force for “incitement to racial hatred”, he at least has the support of one Swedish academic who too has spoken out.

As reported by Breitbart London Thursday, Criminology Professor Leif GW Persson appeared on a Swedish television and said “There is a strong prevalence of criminal immigrants. It is so obvious when it comes to crimes of this nature. Very serious violent crime… Yes, I have made the same observation… anyone with eyes to see can know who is doing these kinds of actions”.

Read the original interview with Torsten Elofsson from September 2015 at Breitbart London

Read: Ten Reasons Sweden’s ‘Multicultural Utopia’ Is Massively Failing