By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
It seems that in Malmö, Sweden police can stop a man for being too muscular.
Police arrested a man after they approached him, suspecting that his physique constituted reasonable suspicion of steroid use. During a field interview their suspicion grew after the man allegedly was reluctant to answer questions.
Later, police obtained a search warrant of his apartment and discovered 20,000 pills and vials of performance enhancing drugs and steroids. Further suspicion was found with the equivalent of $21,000.00 in cash and packaging material. The suspect had text messages allegedly indicating trafficking of the drugs.
Earlier in the year, police in Lund were admonished by the Justice Ombudsman for arresting another muscled man based upon appearance alone. The ombudsman declared that large muscles are not adequate grounds for arrest or to suspect a person of taking drugs to enhance workout routines.
By Darren Smith
Source: The Local
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
First of all: The actual situation in the US (Ferguson, New York) is not different from the situation in Sweden. In Sweden it is the prejudice against muscles, in the US it is prejudice against color of the skin.
The approach of swedish policemen against bodybuilders is comparable to the approach of “white” policemen against “black” citizens in the US.
In every democratic country there are the laws: “If you want to blame someone of a crime, you must have evidence for this!”, “You must respect privacy!” and ”You mustn’t suspect someone only because of the way he/she looks like!”
But everytime in Sweden, in the US, in the UK – yes, even in Germany (I am German citizen, by the way) – there are policemen, who don’t respect the fundamental and citizen rights.
Give a man a badge and he’ll grows muscles
in his head.
Dredd,
It’s sort of like the Maryland grade-schooler being placed on the police radar screen (likely for life) and having a permanent school record until age 18 for making a “pop-tart gun”. Another kid received similar punishment for a Lego gun the size of a dime. Neither case a crime or wrong.
We destroy these kids lives so we can supposly save them.
so, Lance Armstrong will be cancelling his Swedish vacation?
JAG,
What’s a few enemas between friends? 🙂
Sounds like cops in the U.S. making a mockery of reasonable suspicion. Cops here use exercising one’s rights as a grounds for probable cause of an arrest, and are hardly ever punished for it.
Ross
…
American government is supposed to protect us from our neighbors, oligarchs and other bullies – only if one citizen is infringing on the rights of another citizen – not to protect us from ourselves! Not a black & white issue.
…
==========================
Haven’t you heard of the War on Whites being conducted by big government muscle men?
Isn’t Sweden protecting its people from those “neighbors, oligarchs and other bullies” with
nanonanny technology?JAG, Defending her adopted country of Sweden. She’s tougher than most the Swedish men!
This is what I heard from an old guy in Michigan when talking about “the Old Country”. “Yaaa, my peeple com ova fram Sveeeden. For feeeedom and a new vay. Dey did not even vant to fight da Germans back in da var.”
To those of you who comment here and clarify legal issues in language understandable to non-layers, thank you. This enhances understanding for all of us. To those of you who comment and trip around with insider legalese, try harder to educate rather than impress other lawyers. And to those of you who insist on making 70%+ of your comments an excuse to bash the other side of your political viewpoint, you’re training the rest of us to ignore you.
So…Ross…thanks so very much for a small legal lesson.
In theory, in the United States a police officer would have to file an affidavit (under penalty of perjury) testifying to a magistrate judge why the officer thought there was probable cause or reasonable suspicion to perform a search in the first place.
Both the FBI and Innocence Project agree that the only evidence that is reliable is DNA – not fingerprints, ballistics or hair samples.
Criminal profiling is largely junk science, not precise – including for “bicep circumference profiling”. A cop can’t precisely profile a driver with big muscles or for anything else.
Boxers and (non-professional) high school or college wrestlers have exactly that appearance but are drug tested and don’t use steroids.
Any muscle-endurance sport where there are weight classes, where the athletes must be weighed prior to a match would meet that appearance. The athletes weigh train and then diet before a match to maximize their “strength to body weight” ratio.
Ex: You might have an athlete that weighs 200 lbs. in practice but during an official match weighs 180 lbs. but they don’t use steroids.