Kauhajoki police officer claims there were no legal grounds to confiscate killer's handgun

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On Thursday, the Kauhajoki District Court published an application for summons regarding the actions of a police officer who had interviewed student Matti Juhani Saari, the killer in the Kauhajoki school shootings last September, after the police had been made aware by a member of the public of videos Saari had placed on the YouTube website.
      At the same time, the court also made public the statement of defence submitted by the Detective Inspector concerned. The publication of these documents was appropriate as the matter is likely to have important social implications, the court noted.
      Prosecutor Jouko Nurminen demands that the court impose a pecuniary penalty on the officer for dereliction of duty.
     
In Nurminen’s view, the officer handling firearms licences at the local police precinct was guilty of neglect when he failed to examine Matti Saari’s online contacts with like-minded people and his visits to the website of the Columbine High School massacre from 1999.
      According to the prosecutor, the handgun should have been taken away from Saari on account of his online visits and messaging. The murder weapon was a Walther P22 Target, a .22 calibre semi-automatic pistol with a 10-round magazine.
     
The officer himself rejects all accusations of negligence.
      The Detective Inspector questioned Saari concerning the three shooting videos he had placed on the Internet. However, the video clips were just images of Saari aiming with his gun at a shooting range, and the officer did not find anything illegal in them.
     
The officer discussed a potential revocation of Saari’s firearms licence, reviewing his shooting videos. During the interview, even the Jokela incident was touched upon, but it did not appear to have any effect on Saari’s matter-of-fact behaviour.
      When asked about his shooting videos and the lyrics of the German electro act Wumpscut, which he had also posted up on the Internet, Saari argued that a number of other people have placed similar videos on the Internet as well.
      The police officer notes further that when making his decision on Saari’s weapon he did not know anything about Saari’s involvement in any chat groups on the Finnish social networking site IRC-Galleria.
     
In his statement of defence, the Detective Inspector also says that the information received from IRC-Galleria would not have been serious enough to justify the confiscation of Saari’s weapon and the revocation of his firearms licence.
      Nevertheless, the officer gave Saari an unofficial warning, which was supposed to lead to a closer monitoring of the suspect’s actions.
     
The following day, Saari caused a bloodbath at a vocational college in Kauhajoki that left ten others dead before he shot himself in the head. Saari later died of his injuries in hospital in Tampere.
      Matti Saari had applied for a licence for his .22 calibre pistol from the Kauhajoki police station in the summer of 2008, whereupon he was interviewed by the same officer inspector who is now being suspected of dereliction of duty, and thereafter he was given a temporary one-year firearms permit.
      The court will now have to assess the evidential value of a person’s actions on the Internet when it comes to the prevention of crime in Finland.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  NBI struggles to monitor Internet for potentially dangerous content (26.9.2008)
  Police actions to be examined in detail (24.9.2008)
  Police officer in Kauhajoki shooting case to be charged with negligence (27.1.2009)

See also:
  Tens of thousands involved in recovery from Kauhajoki massacre (25.3.2009)
  Eleven die in shooting bloodbath (24.9.2008)
  Police officer who let school shooter keep weapon faces criminal charges (1.10.2008)

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