With its ghost towns and armed men taking on a vast wilderness, one could almost mistake the Svalbard archipelago for the Wild West.
However, a tiny police force on these arctic islands halfway between Norway and the North Pole keeps outlaws — and polar bear botherers — at bay. Its 12 officers dash around on snowmobiles, in helicopters or on boats keeping the peace among the 3,000 hardy souls tough enough to endure the endless winter nights.
“Obviously most cases are pretty trivial,” Svalbard Police Chief Superintendent Stein Olav Bredli said from his office in the main town of Longyearbyen, with its stunning view of the fjord outside.
Photo: AFP
However, Svalbard’s criminal code has its own local peculiarities, such as disturbing a polar bear or boats breaking sea ice. The law takes a dim view of either, with a fine of 1,500 euros (US$1,558) for bothering a bear.
Bredli’s bread and butter are petty thefts, snowmobile accidents, occasional locals caught with drugs and anti-drunk driving campaigns.
The most common crime was once said to be shoe stealing — either intentionally or accidentally after one drink too many — because everyone removes their shoes when stepping indoors, even into a public building.
Photo: AFP
The crime section of the local newspaper Svalbardposten — like almost everything else here, the northernmost in the world — is pretty thin.
“A few brawls after the bars close” is about as much as editor Borre Haugli can hope for.
And yet Svalbard’s residents are armed to the teeth. It is mandatory to carry a rifle when leaving urban areas in case of a close encounter with a polar bear. Since 1971, six people have been killed by polar bears.
Haugli can only recall a single vehicle theft in his two years as the paper’s chief.
“It was probably drunk people who, after a party, saw a car with the keys inside,” he said.
Locals usually leave their homes and vehicles unlocked.
It helps when you have to make a quick getaway from a polar bear — and it is also a sign of the trust required to survive in such a hostile environment.
Besides, where can a thief run to when there are only 40km of roads and the only connection with the outside world — beyond a very long boat journey — is the small airport on the outskirts of Longyearbyen?
However, none of that stopped a Russian from committing the world’s northernmost bank robbery.
Maksim Popov in 2018 made off with 70,000 kroner (US$7,041 at the current exchange rate) after holding up the island’s only bank with a gun before he was swiftly arrested.
He was sentenced to more than a year in prison on the mainland.
The bank has since closed.
Bredli always locks his front door, he said, adding: “Occupational hazard.”
However, until he gave reporters a tour of his station, Bredli said he had never seen its single jail cell.
Clearly, it is rarely used.
“That would require a police officer to permanently guard it,” Bredli said, adding that his small unit cannot afford such a luxury.
Beyond the 130 complaints they investigate each year, Bredli’s officers spend most of their time on 24-hour standby for search-and-rescue missions.
With two helicopters at their disposal, they do it all, from helping boats in trouble at sea to finding tourists lost in the mountains.
“Imagine if a cruise ship were to sink. It’s not easy to evacuate 1,000 passengers,” Bredli said.
“It’s one thing to bring the passengers ashore in what would certainly be difficult weather conditions,” but police would also have to “make sure they are safe from the threat of polar bears,” he added.
On a beach in the Chinese coastal city of Xiamen, just a few kilometers from Taiwan’s Kinmen, life is carefree, despite some of the worst cross-strait tensions in decades. Ignoring warnings from Beijing, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday — the highest-ranking elected US official to visit the nation in 25 years — sparking a diplomatic firestorm. China yesterday launched some of its largest-ever military drills — exercises set to disrupt one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. However, on Xiamen’s palm-fringed beach, there was little concern. “A war? No, I don’t care,” a young IT worker surnamed
According to Forrest Gump, life is like a box of chocolates because “you never know what you’re going to get.” Now, an Indian remake of the movie has been hit by boycott calls over years-old comments by its Muslim star, Aamir Khan. It is the latest example of how Bollywood actors, particularly minority Muslims such as Khan, are feeling increased pressure under Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister Modi. Laal Singh Chaddha, an Indian spin on the 1994 Hollywood hit with Tom Hanks, is expected to be one of India’s biggest films of the year. This is due in large part to its
ACROPORA REVIVAL: A marine science official said that the results of recent studies showed that the reef can still recover in periods that are free of intense disturbances Parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef now have the highest levels of coral cover in decades, an Australian government report said yesterday. Portions of the UNESCO heritage site showed a marked increase in coral cover in the past year, reaching levels not seen in 36 years of monitoring, the Australian Institute of Marine Science said. Scientists surveying 87 sites said that northern and central parts of the reef had bounced back from damage more quickly than some had expected, thanks mainly to fast-growing Acropora — a branching coral that supports thousands of marine species. “These latest results demonstrate the reef can still recover
Screams from soldiers being tortured, overflowing cells, inhuman conditions, a regime of intimidation and murder. Inedible gruel, no communication with the outside world and days marked off with a home-made calendar written on a box of tea. This is what conditions are like inside Olenivka, a notorious detention center where dozens of Ukrainian soldiers burned to death late last month, said a former prisoner of the camp outside Donetsk in the Russian-occupied east of Ukraine. Anna Vorosheva — a 45-year-old Ukrainian entrepreneur — gave a harrowing account to the Observer of her time inside the jail. She spent 100 days in Olenivka