Finnish cops are largely very good, but not spotless

I have written a couple dozens of blog posts about the horrendous corruption, incompetence and cowardice of American police officers.

But what about Finnish police? How do they compare? Are they the epitome of excellency in policing and law enforcement?

Year after year Finland ranks on or near the top of least-corrupt government and law enforcement in the world.

This fame is not undeserved, particularly when it comes to law enforcement and the police in particular. I would estimate that at least 99% of Finnish police officers are really professional, fair, competent, friendly and nice. They know the law, they know how to enforce the law with a high degree of professionalism, and they tend to be very sympathetic towards citizens. Unlike American cops, they don't consider it some kind of badge of honor how many arrests they make, and they aren't constantly fishing for crimes to pin on people. They tend to prefer just verbal warnings over fines and arrests, and they aren't constantly asking for people's IDs (even though in Finland they would have the legal right to do so without having to give any reason for it.) They might even, for example, stop a car to investigate something, and not even ask the driver for his driver's license, if they genuinely don't need it (something that's almost unthinkable in the US.)

The Finnish police also do a lot of community service in that they will often go to non-criminal situations in order to genuinely help people. For example if someone is having some kind of mental breakdown at his home and might be in danger of injuring himself, if the police is called they will genuinely try to help. (This same principle exists in the United States too, but there are way too many stories where the cops either use this as an excuse to illegally trespass and search people's homes, or they abuse the very people they were supposedly there to help.)

In general the police will maintain peace as much as possible, making sure to take preventive actions to avoid things getting out of control. And they tend to do this in a very empathetic, understanding and fair way, although they can be very firm and strict when needed.

But note how I said "99%", not "100%". What about the remaining 1%?

Well, even the Finnish police is not perfect, and while the bad apples are a small minority, they can be really, really rotten.

For example, some years ago two Finnish cops called a mother and his 14-year-old son to the precinct to discuss something (if I remember correctly, it was about a video that the son had taken on the streets of these two cops, and uploaded it online.) Everything seemed legit: The cops were actual police officers, and the place was the actual police precinct of the city.

However, the mother found it a bit strange that the entire precinct was pretty much empty when they arrived there. Indeed, they had been called there after working hours, when there was almost nobody there anymore. Moreover, and quite egregiously, after intimidating the poor woman about the (completely legal) actions of the son, they told her that it would go all away if she transferred 1000€ to both of their bank accounts. At this point the mother was flabbergasted, but had the common sense of requesting that demand by writing. After arguing for quite some time more, but her not giving up, they let her go.

The two police officers were convicted of this clear crime, and even their appeal was rejected by a higher court. You can find a newspaper article about this case here (although the article proper is now behind a paywall, unfortunately.)

Unfortunately this is not a unique case of police corruption in Finland. A very famous Finnish long-time political commentator, Hannu Karpo, who had a likewise long-time TV show on all things that were wrong in Finland, had made several episodes of the program dealing with corruption among the police forces. As an example, in one episode he gave clear proof that in some Finnish police precincts the cops were instructed to follow rich celebrities when they were driving, to catch them breaking any traffic laws and slap them with ginormous fines (in Finland your fines are proportional to your income, which means that ultra-rich people get absolutely humongous fines.) He showed evidence of Finnish cops trailing these celebrities, and even he himself, for literally hours trying to catch them for any sort of traffic violation. He even had radio communication between the patrol officers and their superiors about this.

(And, indeed, especially in the 90's and early 2000's it was a common newspaper story how such-and-such celebrity had got a humongous fine for some traffic violation. It was almost a weekly occurrence.)

I myself once experienced the less-than-nice side of some Finnish cops. While most of them are really nice and understanding, not all of them are.

I was once crossing a street with a divider, and I walked to the divider, technically against red lights. I did make sure that no car was anywhere even near that lane when I crossed it. However, I didn't notice that on the next lane there was a police van. The cop inside rolled down the window and started yelling at me really angrily, asking if I'm color-blind or something. I was so surprised by it that I couldn't say anything. His light turned green, yet he kept yelling at me, impeding the cars behind him, which started honking. After throwing some cursewords he accelerated at very unsafe speeds, causing a very clear dangerous situation at the junction, where other cars also started honking because of that dangerous maneuver.

Luckily, no accident happened. And I mean, luckily for me. That's because I'm somewhat certain that if he had caused an accident, he would have blamed me (even though it was him who accelerated and drove in a completely unsafe and reckless manner), and that would have been a crippling amount of money in fines and repair costs that I would have had to pay. He just sounded like the kind of angry petty man who would have put everything on me. And good luck to me trying to fight that in court. I highly doubt I would have won even if I tried. It would have been his word against mine.

That incident taught me to always look around to see if there are any cop cars nearby before crossing a street. A "lesson" that I shouldn't really have had to learn.

So yes, while 99% of Finnish cops may be nice, friendly and fair, there's always that rotten 1%.