Article 9 of the Ordinance on Police Training

Article 9 of the Ordinance on Police Training is presented as a narrow procedural opening in the effort to obtain a trained military marksman for police service during the Aspsås prison hostage crisis. It allows the National Police Board, in special circumstances, to grant exemptions from the training requirements in the ordinance. In the scene, that authority becomes the starting point for a carefully constructed employment workaround: rather than send an active military marksman to perform police duties, officials propose temporarily converting him into a police employee.

Provision and Setting

The provision is identified by its formal citation, SFS 1999:740, and is read aloud as the discussion turns from the general question of whether police marksmen can be used to the practical problem of how to appoint one. Its relevant text gives the National Police Board power, under special circumstances, to grant exemptions from the training required by the ordinance. The evidence establishes this authority as the legal basis for exploring a solution; it does not show that an exemption is formally granted.

The urgency comes from the hostage crisis at Aspsås. Ewert Grens argues that a life is at stake and presses for an armed forces marksman to be brought in. John Edvardson responds that the armed forces cannot be used for police matters, citing the ordinance on military support for civil activities. Article 9 enters the discussion when officials consider a different route: not using a serving soldier as a military operative, but employing a trained marksman in a police role. The distinction is central to the proposal, which tries to meet the immediate operational need while formally respecting the boundary between military and police functions.

Proposed Employment Route

The state secretary suggests beginning with Article 9 and working toward a solution. The national police commissioner is initially unsure what is being proposed. The state secretary points out that the commissioner, like the state secretary, is a lawyer despite not having formal police training. That comparison shifts the discussion from whether the candidate has completed the ordinary police course to whether an exceptional appointment can be arranged under the regulation.

The plan is specific. Officials would find a trained and equipped military marksman, obtain cooperation from his superiors, and discharge him from armed forces service. The police would then offer him a temporary contract lasting six hours, appointing him as a superintendent or at another rank selected by the police. Once the six-hour contract had been completed, he would apply for a vacant armed forces position that had not yet been advertised and be reinstated. The sequence is designed to place the marksman in police employment for the period in which his services are needed, rather than deploy him as military staff in a police operation.

The proposal therefore depends on several distinct steps, not simply on the existence of Article 9: cooperation from the marksman’s military superiors, discharge from military service, a short police contract, and subsequent reapplication to the armed forces. The regulation supplies a possible basis for relaxing training requirements, while the temporary employment arrangement addresses the separate problem of institutional status. The scene presents this as a route officials intend to work through, not as an already completed appointment or a settled judicial interpretation of the provision.

Legal Function and Limits

Article 9 is not described as a general permission to disregard police training rules. Its stated authority is conditional: exemptions may be granted under special circumstances. The hostage emergency supplies the exceptional setting in which the state secretary argues for pursuing an exemption-compatible arrangement. The text does not establish that every proposed step would automatically satisfy the ordinance, or that the National Police Board has already exercised its discretion.

The contrast with the military-support restriction gives the provision its dramatic force. Officials do not simply dismiss the rule against employing the armed forces in police matters. Instead, they look for a way to alter the marksman’s formal employment status before using his specialist ability in police service. Article 9 makes the question one of legal construction and administrative process: whether an exceptional police appointment can be made even though the candidate lacks ordinary police training, and whether a temporary transfer between institutions can be organized within the narrow time available.

Narrative Significance

The provision marks the point where a life-threatening emergency meets the ingenuity, and the strain, of bureaucratic procedure. The proposed six-hour contract is deliberately short, but its precision shows how seriously the officials take the legal obstacle: the candidate must cease to be military staff, become a police employee, and only afterward seek reinstatement. The law is neither treated as irrelevant nor allowed to end the discussion; it becomes a framework that officials attempt to navigate under pressure.

The scene also distinguishes a legal possibility from an accomplished outcome. Article 9 is read and used to shape a plan, but the evidence here establishes the proposal rather than its execution or the formal grant of an exemption. Its significance lies in the attempt to make an exceptional police role possible through ordinary administrative acts arranged in an extraordinary sequence. The rule thus exposes the practical gap between what an institution needs in a crisis and what its regulations ordinarily permit, while leaving unresolved whether the proposed route will be accepted and carried out.