POLL

Police treat foreigners worse than local people, Foreigner.fi readers say

Police: Photo: Helsinki police.

Foreigner.fi will ask a different question about Finland and Finnish lifestyle every Friday on its official Twitter account @foreignerfi.

In the USA after George Flyod’s death, almost everyone criticized the police’s treatment of minorities in all American states. These protests spread to Europe, where many people also demonstrated to denounce the police behaviour.

The police behaviour is always a critical subject and especially minorities complain about their acts almost all over the world. Therefore Foreigner.fi asked the readers in a Twitter poll: “Do you think the police treat foreigners worse than the local population?”

The respondents were given two options which were 'Yes' and ‘No’.

The mini poll was answered by 55 readers and 52.7% of them said 'Yes’ and 47.3% voted ‘No’.

About the reader’s comments, one reader said that, “In my view legal system give more support to local than the foreigners. Especially when there r cases related to custody. Secondly an unfair law of having yki test is hurdle for foreigner to access the right of citizenship. Where full time working one hv time to learn language.”

Although the poll was launched in Twitter, we got also some comments from readers via Facebook:

“Maybe you should include border patrol too. In my opinion police is totally fine, but I am not sure about rajavartiolaitos. They seem to pick on foreign looking people just because they look foreign. I had a quite funny experience with one of them on Allegro. She picked on me and started to tear apart my luggage frantically for 20 minutes or so in the middle of the train. It was horrible, the entire coach was looking at me and I was treated like a smuggler. Finally she thought she found what she was looking for. A lot of cigarette box looking things....but it was just tea from Russia. I assume I was picked because of my name and looks. They did not search anyone else. I took that train dozens of times and I have never seen the humiliation rajavartiolaitos staged on me with 'Finnish looking' persons.” (FB)

“In Lappeenranta many times I encountered police on different occasion.

Best police of Lappeenranta region

In few 3 -4 cases I won against local finns

With help of police

P.s: totally personal experience base review” (FB)

Foreigner.fi is going to ask a different question about Finland every Friday on its official Twitter account @foreigner.fi