In 2023, a total of ten women in Sweden were killed by a man they had or had had a romantic relationship with – seven of them were from Stockholm, according to police statistics. Last year, the preliminary figure was that six out of eleven murdered women came from the capital, and so far this year, three women have lost their lives due to violence in close relationships.
"Can track event trails"
To stop this development, the Stockholm police will now focus extra on work with particularly vulnerable victims, which largely concerns crimes in close relationships. In a new pilot project, it will be mandatory for police on external duty who are alerted to suspected crimes in close relationships to contact a forensic coordinator.
It has previously been part of our checklist, but it has not always been done. A forensic coordinator assesses whether a forensic technician should be called in, explains Cecilia Närfors, coordinator for particularly vulnerable victims at the Stockholm police.
We should not guess and think that this is a crime in a close relationship, so then we will not find any trails or that DNA is present at the crime scene because the suspected person lives there. We want to spread the information that forensic technicians can track event trails.
Three-month project
What is an event trail, then? Cecilia Närfors gives an example.
We had a case where a woman had a laundry detergent package thrown at her by her partner. It broke and the woman told about the incident in the interrogation and how the man had vacuumed up the detergent, while the man said it had not happened at all. The forensic technicians found detergent in the vacuum cleaner.
The project will last for three months, followed by an evaluation.
