“It’s a golden age for crooks”

“It’s a golden age for crooks” is Christian Habersaat’s recurring condemnation of the police system after a reform transformed local policing on Bornholm. The saying distills his belief that bureaucratic delay was giving criminals an advantage, and frames his rejection of the system he was leaving at retirement.

Meaning and Context

Before the reform, Habersaat had close contact with local citizens and a direct connection to events on the island’s east coast. After it took effect, he saw that work reorganized into constant transport between east and west, while decision-making processes accumulated between the occurrence of a crime and a serious response. In his view, time was wasted, leads were lost, and criminals got away.

Against that backdrop, the phrase was not an isolated quip: he always said it, “as if someone cared to listen.” Its bluntness turns his complaint into a compact accusation about the consequences of procedural delay. The words express his judgment of the system rather than a claim that every criminal benefited from it.

Place in Habersaat’s Retirement

Habersaat’s hostility to the direction of society extended beyond policing, but the saying is specifically anchored in his experience of the reform and its effects on local work. He resented colleagues who supported the system and, in his view, did not know him or the extent of his forty years of loyal service. He did not want them at his retirement reception, acting as though they were honoring him.

The dispute also shaped the setting of the main reception. Rather than hold it at the police station in Rønne, as was normal, Habersaat chose the local community hall in Listed, just six hundred meters from his house. The phrase thus belongs to a larger act of refusal: at the end of his career, his criticism of institutional change accompanied his decision to mark retirement on his own terms.