According to police statistics obtained by state broadcaster Sveriges Radio, September 2015 was the last calendar month in the city with no reports of guns being fired.
“We have just had an extraordinary number of shooting in 2016, 2017 and even over a part of 2018,” Jonas Karlberg, head of Malmö police's serious crimes unit, told the radio broadcaster. “So obviously to the extent that there's no shooting in Malmö, we're extremely pleased.”
The good news has not continued into April, however, with a shooting taking place on April 10th at a house in Rosengård, although no one was injured.
There have been just six recorded shootings so far this year in the city, with no one so far killed or injured in the attacks.
This comes in contrast to 2018, which was the deadliest year to date in the city's gang war, with no fewer than 12 people shot dead, and four shootings in just 24 hours on November 8th. Ten people were shot dead in 2017.
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Manne Gerell, Associate Professor of Criminology at Malmö University, told The Local it was too early to tell whether the city was at a turning point.
“Obviously it's good to see that there are no shootings at the moment, but it's a bit too soon to put any interpretations on it,” he said.
He said, however, that the police's Stop Shooting or Sluta Skjut programme might have played a role in declining rates of gun violence.
“It's certainly possible. That programme has produced reductions in gun violence in other cities where it's been tested,” he said. “But it could just be coincidence, or it could be having more people in prison, finally.”
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