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Dagbladet: Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) raising threat level in Norway | Translation in post body
(www.dagbladet.no)
The threat to Jewish and Israeli targets in Norway is seen as significantly increased. The terror threat level is therefore raised from moderate to high, and the police is armed.
- There are multiple negative conditions that have increased the terror threat, among others conditions related to the ongoing escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. In Norway it is first and foremost threats to Jewish and Israeli targets that are significantly raised, says PST senior advisor Eirik Veum to the Norwegian News Agency.
He says that the PST does not wish to say anything concrete about what this entails, but informs that the PST is available for the press from 17 o'clock.
- The PST has at the time no information on if there are concrete plans at hand for committing terrorist acts against targets in Norway, but we are working quickly with clearing up threats and points of insecurity, Veum says.
The "high" terror threat level is a level 4 on a scale of 1 to 5.
The police director has based on the threat evaluation decided that the police should be armed nationwide.
- The PST describes a serious and tense situation in the Middle East. Increased likelihood for attempted terror in Norway is a situation the police take incredibly seriously, and we have a number of measures for protecting the people and ensuring we are as prepared as possible, says police director Benedicte Bjørnland in a press release.
The temporary arming of the police is effective immediately.
- The decision is based on that the police should be able to go quicker into action in the case of a possible terror attack to prevent it, limit the area of damage, or stop an ongoing attack, says Bjørnland.
The police have for a longer period had more measures for the purposes of protecting Jewish and Israeli interests in Norway. This effort is now being strengthened.
- Going forward we will have increased attention directed to the fact that state actors can use criminal networks for committing terrorism, and which consequences this has for the police's efforts against these milieus, says Bjørnland.
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Is handing out guns to all the cops something Norway does routinely or is this new?
It happens occasionally, and if I remember correctly there are some locations where they're always armed.
I was just about to add a comment providing some more context on that point. The police were temporarily armed for 237 days straight in 2022/2023 in response to the Pride shooting in Oslo, and the police were also temporarily armed from November 25th, 2014 to February 3rd, 2016, I believe these are the longest continuous periods when the police have been armed, and there are also shorter periods of temporary arming.
The Norwegian Police Federation claims that from the end of 2014 to March of 2023, the police had been armed for 31 out of 100 months.
The last time I can clearly remember the police going armed for an extended time was after the Utøya massacre and terrorist attack on the AP offices, otherwise cops don't have guns other than one locked in the trunks of cruisers.