“You’ve gotta help us! We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!”

Danish ‘CiF’ columnist Jakob Illeberg (yes, that one) has yet another befuddled article in CiF about the increasing violence between immigrants and biker gangs:

There is no end in sight in the Danish gang war that has been raging for more than half a year – on Sunday night two masked youths, connected to the immigrant gangs that are fighting out a turf war with the Hell's Angels, attacked a pub on Amager in Copenhagen. They forced a man to lie on his belly at gunpoint and then fired 10 shots into the pub, killing one and injuring two, before shooting the man on the street in his kneecaps. The incident is the third in as many days.

How vibrant….

The gang war has been pasteurising life in the Danish capital for far too long. The police have tried to control matters, but rather than being solved, the problems seem to be escalating and the locals are increasingly staying indoors or even moving out of the trouble spots.

You mean, the ordinary police are useless against well-armed, well organised gangs with a tribal secrecy rule. Well, I never….

The Danish minister of justice, Brian Mikkelsen, insists that the fight against the gangs is being won, but it certainly doesn't feel that way walking on Norrebro in central Copenhagen this weekend. The atmosphere, in an area usually full of people in shops and cafes, is tense – the locals just want the problems and the criminals to go away.

Are the politicians addressing this?

Why, yes, it seems they are:

The Danish integration minister, Birthe Ronn Hornbech, is now contemplating the introduction of a new set of laws that will in effect mean that all foreigners caught committing a crime involving a weapon will be expelled from the country. The proposed policy is supported by the rest of centre-right government and the Danish People's party, and therefore looks likely to be passed in parliament.

Hurrah! Of course, it won’t solve the problem whereby these ‘immigrant gang members’ turn out to be second or third-generation citizens, will it? But baby steps, and all that…

Are you happy, Jakob? Oh, I forgot:

But several experts have warned that the new zero tolerance strategy is risking institutionalised inequality. While the tough line might have some effect on the immigrant gangs, it could easily be seen by the Hell's Angels as giving them the upper hand and reason to start an offensive.

Yup, you did just hear a Danish citizen decry attempts to remove foreigners who have abused their host country’s laws as somehow ‘unfair’….

It is strange that it should take dozens of episodes with firearms and several deaths before the police is willing to upgrade its presence.

Really…?

You mean, with all the concerned liberals like yourself ready to whine and complain about any perceived ‘racism’, the fact that the cops are apt to say ‘Oooh, not stepping in that snakepit…’ comes as a surprise to you?

But while the Hell's Angels and their supporters are a clear and relatively easily defined group, the immigrant gangs are less well known. It is them the Danish population fear the most. But these gangs do not represent the foreigners in Denmark, they just give them a bad name.

You could, presumably, say the same of the Hells Angels. Should the police give them the kid glove treatment as a result?

While there is every reason to clamp down on the gangs' criminal activity, legislating one's way out of trouble is often not the answer. If a white boy gets a small prison sentence for carrying a weapon while a foreign boy is expelled for the same crime, surely that is bound to make the foreigners feel even more stigmatised.

‘A white boy’…? But a little while back, you were saying how less well defined the immigrant groups are. Why, then, so sure that some of them aren’t ‘white’?

And, who cares if the ‘foreigners’ (by which you really mean, ‘criminals’) feel stigmatised? Presumably, the ordinary working immigrants trying to make a living without stepping into a bullet are as sick of these yahoos as everyone else!

The question then remains: what to do? Few in Denmark seem to have a clear idea. The original plan was to let the gangs fight it out, but that now seems a far too dangerous proposition for the rest of the Danish population.

‘The original plan was to let the gangs fight it out’? Really…?

I’m reminded of that ‘Simpsons’ sketch, where Flanders’ hippy dippy parents take their out of control child to a doctor and tell him: “You’ve gotta help us! We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!”

Trying nothing got you nowhere, did it, Jakob? So kindly get out of the way while people try something….