A few days ago I saw a reel of happy police students. They were exuberantly happy, not because they had graduated, but because the state might pay off their CSN loan.
Right now the government is investing heavily in the police. Next year, they want to inject 1.38 billion kroner into the police force.
Part of the increase will go towards paying the student loans for those who choose, or have already graduated from, the police academy. According to their forecast, the budget for the entire judiciary will grow from 69 billion in 2023 to 100 billion in 2027.
All of this is, of course, in line with Tidöpartieren’s whipped law and order program. There will be more police, Sweden will become safer and the gangs will be crushed. That last one may not be as pronounced as the first, but that is of course the goal.
It seems generally that we have gained a new trust in the police. Thieves must be hunted, penalties must be increased and more must be convicted. The fact that our prisons are still a hustler’s academy does not bother us.
Our view of the justice system works in the same way as the dramaturgy of a police series, we care until the bad guys are caught – then we lose interest.
The premiere does not feel like a coincidence
That the third and final season of Thin blue line is premiering now is of course a coincidence, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
Today, it’s hard to imagine that just a few years ago the average influencer could proclaim ACAB (all cops are bastards) and get away with it.
In the third season of Thin blue line is the drug trade and how it affects the innocent in society in focus.
We meet middle-class batik hippies who campaign to legalize it, young people who hang out in the schoolyard and gang members who plant a bomb in an elementary school.
When the latter breaks, the school janitor is killed and several school children are seriously injured, the season shifts into second gear.
At the same time that Malmö is wading in the drug swamp, the snob couple Magnus and Sara are living the life of toddlers, with all that that entails in the form of febrile seizures and a lack of love life.
I Thin blue line is the job just a projection surface for the interpersonal relationships. Because, you see, cops are people too.
Thin blue line is a workplace drama that has more in common with the hyped TV series The Bear or Industry änmed crime series such as Bron or True Detective.
These are patrolling neighborhood cops – you know, the kind the good-hearted homicide detectives in eighties action movies were relegated to after taking on a corrupt police chief or digging too deep into a case with too high a politician.
more about the thin blue line
Want to be close to reality
With the Thin Blue Line, creator Cilla Jackert wanted to be closer to reality and depict the corps’ everyday life.
Here we are treated to lunchroom realism with police officers struggling with whiplash injuries, divorces and difficult family relationships. But here, too, a romantic shimmer slips in.
Of course, the work is problematic with gray scales. Conflicts arise in the workplace.
Someone says something inappropriate, another is a sad paragraph rider, and a third is a “nice guy” but who has problems with his temperament.
In the end, it is still the police who stand for the good force in a society in constant decay. I’m not saying cops aren’t, but the ever-recurring subtext is that cops are our unsung heroes.
It is bitter medicine that has become harder to swallow over the years.
Mobile footage of police officers shooting
During the Black Lives Matter protests, a new word appeared on the social political radar. Copaganda.
It is actually an old term that has been used for as long as the police force has had a need to wash its hands, and where the television and film industry has assisted with beautifying portraits of kind constables rescuing cats that have climbed trees and resolving conflicts peacefully.
But in connection with the barrage of mobile films where police officers shoot minorities, more and more people have begun to question how the corps is portrayed in police series and by the media.
It’s really not that bad Thin blue line as Cilla Jackert and her team have largely succeeded in their ambition to creep closer to reality.
It is still an occasionally affecting portrayal. The series effectively plays on the emotional strings when the camera is allowed to linger on the close-up and human portraits that occasionally glimpse.
The series is at its best when it lets the individual actors take their place and the small scenes spread out.
A mother outside the police cordon at the bombed school is in disarray after she forced her stay-at-home daughter to go there.
Reflects society
Thin blue line is one of the best Swedish series that SVT has produced in recent years.
Precisely because it doesn’t try to be a British detective story or an American sitcom.
Instead, it is a kind of reflection of Swedish society and the difficulties we face.
But important to remember for those of you considering free police training – it’s still a spectacle.