Piketen

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Piketen insignia
One of Piketens three Sand Cats.

Piketen (or Piketenheten) is a special operations asset of the Swedish Police Service, similar to the SWAT in the United States. It is called in when situations that are too dangerous for ordinary police to handle occur, such as hostage situations, arresting armed suspects and arresting barricaded suspects.

The main task for Piketen is dangerous situations in dangerous environments, i.e. hostage situations. Other tasks are riot control, escorting VIP's/objects of value and serving high-risk arrest warrants etc. 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.

Piket officers from Malmö have been deployed with the EULEX Intervention Group in Kosovo, tasked with high-risk operations such as hostage rescue and arresting armed criminals.

Weapons

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.

See also

  • Nationella Insatsstyrkan
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