The Helsinki Police Department has been systematically involved in activities that refer to ethnic profiling, according to information received by Yle.
For several years, the police department kept a record of the movements of the Finnish Roma community in the Helsinki metropolitan area, taking into account the vehicles owned by the Roma and the social districts in which they moved.
The log entries also included other information, such as knives or other weapons in the person’s possession.
The log was created as a result of internal instructions issued by the Helsinki Police Department in 2013. The instructions called on patrol police to initiate low-threshold measures if they found violations or discovered things of interest.
According to the information received by Yle, the interpretation of these guidelines in the field meant that Roma were detained without legal grounds and their personal data was collected.
The collected data was stored in the so-called. To the police log, a free-form log book. About a thousand observations were recorded over the four years until the log retired in the summer of 2017.
The National Board of Police has recently launched an investigation into the operations of the Helsinki Police Department.
Police: The log is meant to help solve the shootings
Deputy Head of the Helsinki Police Department, Heikki Kopperoinen, says the log was related to the shootings that took place in Helsinki at the time.
According to Kopperoinen, the police investigated several shooting events in Helsinki in 2013-2017. These events, he said, also set aside bystanders.
According to Kopperoinen, police investigations revealed that an unfortunate number of these cases appeared to concern Roma.
"Shooting had to be addressed somehow. The matter was monitored and efforts were made to ensure that bystanders and not perpetrators ended up taking the bullet around their necks," said Kopperoinen.
Did the log only contain information about the Roma community?
"It mainly contained information on the Roma community and the vehicles in their possession," said Kopperoinen.
Police deny ethnic profiling
Kopperoinen denies that this was an ethnic profiling of Finnish Roma.
Ethnic profiling means that the police target a person because of their ethnic background or skin color. Such activities are discriminatory and prohibited under the Equality Act.
Have the Helsinki police detained people just because they were of Roma origin and not because there is something else, such as a certain vehicle, that connects them to crime?
"By no means do I consider this activity to be ethnic profiling. Of course, I can say that the police department has really made a long way in these matters in recent years. We may have made mistakes along the way, but much has been made and corrected."
According to Kopperoinen, police officers working in the field have received training in matters related to immigrants and equality in recent years.
Were there excessive interpretations of the code in the field?
"I dare say they may have been. I wouldn’t be surprised" said Kopperoinen.
"We must remember that this has not been a [particular] ethnic origin. The purpose of these actions was to stop the shooting so that no one would lose their life or be injured." said Kopperoinen.
The police no longer follow the same procedure
According to Kopperoinen, the department heads discussed the use of the logbook when he started as a police chief in the summer of 2017. They decided to retire the fishing log. The shooting events had also stopped, Kopperoinen added.
"It was decided that misinterpretable activities should be retired. It has been stopped and attempts have been made to move forward."
Would it be possible for the police to record the movements of an individual ethnic group?
"The world has changed a lot in a short time. We would no longer act this way. If we face the same situation again, we look at it through today’s lens and wonder what it looked like to the outside world."
Has the world really changed so significantly in just four years?
"Yeah. The change has been incredibly rapid, especially in the metropolitan area. Social media and civic debate have changed a lot since these guidelines were issued in 2013. Police also need to develop and understand how to work without the presumption of discrimination," said Kopperoinen.
Source: The Nordic Page