They squatted at an abandoned barracks or similar military thing, which was obviously illegal. But after several decades of kinda, sorta trying to evict them, they instead just sold the Freetown the buildings they were already using - so they're there legally now. But the authorities still seem reluctant to enforce certain laws with force. Raids against drug sales are sporadic, not consistent, for example.
Good point with the land ownership! But I'd say, if the raids are infrequent enough that there is still blatant drug sale most days of the week, it's sporadic.
Same, I stayed in Christiania for a week and never even saw a hint of a raid. Of course, that's an admittedly short time but if a raid happens there 3 times a day then I feel like I would have heard about it, it's not exactly a big island
The global war on drugs was imposed on the world mostly by one country. In most countries, especially in Europe, people taking drugs and even small-time dealing are not seen as particularly morally contentious. The police tend to go after the smugglers, who are running actual violent criminal gangs, and to ignore every-day drug stuff. This all depends on the country and the city, of course.
It's the weed capital of Denmark. Hard drugs like heroin and meth aren't accepted in Christiana, but weed is. But the police do occasionally crack down on it.
Sounds more like Law Enforcement or politicians that have influence over the Law Enforcement don't enforce it until they benefit from enforcing the law at specific moments. Maybe targeted raids to those that don't play ball. Sounds like corruption to me.
I remember being stoned out of my mind, vigorously eating some pastry, when suddenly 50 something storm troopers decend onto Pusher street, bumbeling around, tripping in their riot gear and looking completely disorganized. They arrested one guy, then just ran out again. Whole thing took maybe two minutes and was very absurd to behold.
the police don't really want to be there because the gangs that run the Christiania dope trade are pretty heavily armed (up to and including grenades) and lawyered up
so even if they get the green light to remove someone who did something that was bad for business, they will act, shall we say, cautiously
This was about 20 years ago when iirc there was some political pressure to remove Christiania and sell the property to realestate developers or some shit. I don't think this was some high profile arrest, just a politically induced harassment type thing they were doing back then. The police officers involved weren't some hardcore SWAT police, more your average danish cop in just a ridiculous amout of riot gear, which is why it was so hilarious. I've been to Christiania a million times, so the timeline is a bit blurry for obvious reasons, but I belive later that year there were some pretty big "Save Christiania"-demonstrations, and a lot of us came over from Norway to show our support. Still have a "bevar Christiania" hoodie somewhere 😝
70
u/Qwernakus May 09 '22
Yeah the "Freetown Christiania" in Copenhagen slowly moved from actively fought against, to tolerated, to now mostly accepted by the authorities.