Analysis · 2 min read
Emergency services under attack — stones, violence and police escort
Documented attacks against police, ambulance and fire services have more than quadrupled since 2015. In seven areas, police escort is routine. What does the data say?
Short version in the chapter: Crime & safety — chapter
Published 2026-07-16
The rise 2015 → 2024
Fire & rescue (MSB): interventions with stone-throwing rose from about 70 (2015) to 310 (2024). Ambulance (SKR/Region Stockholm): documented incidents from 90 to 360. Violence against police: from 2,400 to 4,100 reports (Brå).
The rise is steepest 2015–2019. Since 2021 the trend has flattened but continues weakly upward.
Seven areas with routine escort
Rinkeby-Tensta and Bergsjön have police escort as regular routine for ambulance and rescue interventions. Five more areas (Husby, Hjällbo, Rosengård, Vivalla, Norrby) have escort on risk assessment.
MSB has introduced special training for fire & rescue in vulnerable areas — including medical interventions under police protection (indoor rescue).
The 2020 sentencing reform
Since January 1, 2020, the offence 'sabotage against emergency services' carries a sentence up to 18 years. Outcome: 87 verdicts 2020–2024 (Brå), of which 12 led to over 4 years in prison.
The effect on reports is hard to measure — reporting propensity may have risen while actual attacks fell.
What do the personnel say?
Firefighters' National Association survey 2024: 34% of rescue personnel in metropolitan counties report having been subjected to threats or violence in the past year. Corresponding figure in 2015: 12%.
The ambulance workers' union Kommunal reports that sick leave caused by threats and violence rose 45% between 2019 and 2024.
Counter-arguments and alternative readings
One objection from criminologist Manne Gerell (MAU) is that the rise in attacks on emergency services partly reflects increased police presence in vulnerable areas after 2019 — more contact generates more incidents regardless of whether the propensity to attack has changed.
A second reading is a substitution effect: as gang violence toward other gang members declines (shootings down from 63 → 40), confrontations shift toward government personnel. That means attacks on emergency services are not a standalone trend but a mirror of which groups seek conflict.
Method and uncertainty
'Attacks on emergency personnel' is an aggregate category covering violence, threats, sabotage and stone-throwing against police, rescue services, ambulance and customs staff. Brå introduced its own code only in 2020, breaking comparability backwards.
Rescue services and ambulances log incidents in separate operational systems that do not always appear in police statistics. The total is therefore underestimated; MSB's 2024 annual report assumes 30–40% under-reporting for rescue services.
What this does NOT say
The analysis says nothing about outcomes for those attacked. Most incidents cause minor injuries; serious cases (live rounds against police, rescue operations blocked with fatal outcomes) are rare but follow the same trend.
Nor does it say why individuals attack emergency personnel. That is a question for social psychology and criminology requiring qualitative studies — not reporting statistics.