Piketen (or Piketgruppen) is an emergency response asset of the Swedish Police Service, similar to the SWAT in the United States.
Piketen is called in when situations occur that are too dangerous for ordinary police to handle, such as hostage situations, arresting armed suspects and arresting barricaded suspects. Piketen has one main task and four secondary tasks.
The main task is dangerous situations in dangerous environments, i.e. hostage situations. Their other tasks are serving high-risk arrest warrants, riot control and escorting VIP's and other objects of value. Piketen has been active since 1979, and its creation was an answer to the events of the Norrmalmstorg robbery in 1973 where robber Jan Erik "Janne" Olsson took four hostages at Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg ("Norrmalm's Square") in Stockholm.
They are stationed in the three largest cities of Sweden: Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. Some counties that do not have a Piket-unit have local task forces trained by local police, which have almost the same training as Piketen. Piketen is the best trained police unit of the Swedish police, next to Nationella Insatsstyrkan ("National Task Force" in Swedish).
The main weapon of both Piketen and Nationella Insatsstyrkan is the Heckler & Koch MP5, the Heckler & Koch G36C and they both use SIG Sauer 226 as sidearm. Piket officers are very well trained in many methods of entry, such as rapelling and door breaching.