POLICEMAN REALISED CHASING USERS DIDN’T HELP
AS A young policeman in Vesterbro, in the heart of Copenhagen, in the 90s, Henrik Orye was regularly assigned to ”chasing around” drug addicts and charging them with minor offences.
But after being promoted through the ranks, he was the commander assigned to deal with Nanna in 2008 as Denmark realised a softer approach was needed. He said: “Nanna hated police and I wasn’t very keen on lawyers either but we did realise that there had to be change.
“My boss had heard of this angry woman and said I had to meet her, so we sat down over a coffee and talked about what we could do to help. We ended up starting to like and trust each other and it did lead to us changing the way we did things.”
When Nanna’s DCR bus opened, Henrik was duty bound to check it out but was reluctant to take any action against users or staff. He said: “Things worked themselves out pretty quickly.
“It’s understood in our country that we made a real step forward and we had to come together to do that.
“We are now no longer interested in chasing drug users but we treat dealers the same as always.”
Henrik said the relationship with the street lawyers group also enables them to be used as a conduit for encouraging better behaviour from drug users, in terms of noise reduction and moving from residential areas.
He added: “After DCRs, petty crime decreased, drugs litter decreased massively and we have more time to spend investigating serious crime.”