The "Real Inspector Palmu"* prepares for retirement

Back in the 1970s, so they say, Harri Palmu knew every foreigner in Helsinki

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By Jarmo Huhtanen
     
      Inspector Palmu tells a story:
      "One evening, a few years back, I was watching TV, and on Channel 4 they had this quiz programme that asked who Dirty Harry was. There were four alternatives, and A was Clint Eastwood, and D was - the bloody cheek of it - Harri Palmu."
      Inspector Palmu grins at the recollection. "What had me scratching my head was how the hell they KNEW!"
      The nickname given to the police officer by Olli Vuorio, nowadays the Chief of Police for Espoo, is used only within a very select circle inside the Helsinki Police Department.
      "I don't know where it came from, but it was probably because I've always had a very straight-up and tough approach on foreigners' matters."
      On the wall of Dirty Harry's office in the police building in Malmi is a framed message that reads something like "Remember Yesterday, Dream of Tomorrow, Live for Today."
      Next to it is an old advertising poster for Palmu cider that reads: "First work, then Palmus".
      Harri Palmu is Director of the Immigration Unit of the Aliens' Office under the Helsinki Police Department. He has worked with aliens' affairs in the city for 35 years, and will be heading into retirement this summer.
      Palmu's long expertise has been used in the drafting of all recent Finnish aliens' legislation, and he has also diligently passed on his knowledge of the ins and outs of the laws covering foreigners to a wide range of other authorities.
      Harri Palmu grew up as a barefoot Helsinki boy in the Töölö district of town, more specifically in Taka-Töölö, on the west side of the main thoroughfare Mannerheimintie. They started calling him "Inspector Palmu" round there as a teenager in 1960, at the time of the release of the first film featuring the bowler-hatted detective created by novelist Mika Waltari, Inspector Frans J. Palmu.
      The nickname gained greater resonance from the early 1970s, when Palmu was taken on as a passport inspector with the Helsinki Police Department. Curiously enough, in those days a pure-bred local lad was something of a rarity among the capital's police force.
      So the story goes, back in the 1970s Palmu knew each and every one of the foreigners living in Helsinki.
      "Yes, you could probably say that. I knew them, and they knew me - and relations were in order and matter-of-fact on both sides."
      The claim - of knowing everyone - is by no means as far-fetched as it may sound today: thirty years ago there were only around 4,000 foreigners living in the Finnish capital, and applications for extensions to residence permits and work permits were made in person. The chances are that old passports from those days - now long since clipped and expired - will have Palmu's signature underneath one of the blue stamps granting the right of residence, initially for six months or even less.
      Things were very different then. "There were no asylum-seekers in those days", notes Palmu. In 1980, the total population of foreigners in the entire country was just 12,800 - today there are three times that many from Russia and Estonia alone, and around 110,000 in all. It is still a small number by European comparisons, but the relative growth since 1990 has been fourfold.
      Back in 1985, attending a conference held in Sweden, Palmu told his Nordic colleagues that in the previous year Finland had received 13 asylum applications.
      "The Swedes in particular, they nearly fell off their chairs at that. They must have had 10,000 or more, even by then."
      Palmu broaches a very tricky subject with caution.
      "One of the recognised problems is abuse of the asylum applications system. The system is used as a means of staying in the country when there are no real grounds for it."
      "We are actually in the process of a major migration of peoples: there are those coming north from the south, and also heading west from the east. It started already at the end of the 1960s."
      In his retirement, Palmu plans to devote some of his attention to history and to "Stadi-slang", the rich local argot of the Helsinki streets.
      He will also be continuing his involvement with Helsingin Kisa-Veikot, a local track & field club. "I've been a member of HKV for 51 years, and in that time I've done just about everything there except being the club chairman."
      The real Inspector Palmu pulls out another anecdote: "In 1985, the city marked the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki Document at the CSCE summit here, and there were a lot of VIPs around, so the police were pretty sensitive. One day I got an urgent call that a submarine had been sighted coming into Hakaniemi" [a district bordering the sea, just to the north of the city centre].
      "The police officer on the other end of the phone described the vessel to me. I told him right away that it wasn't a submarine, but a lifeboat that had been put ashore from a Soviet merchant ship, and the boat had the tarpaulin hood up. I said the crew must have come over from the oil harbour to do some shopping."
      Palmu lets out a broad laugh.
      "The police patrol had another look and it turned out I was right. After that they were a bit sheepish at having made such a fuss about nothing. I don't know whether it has anything to do with anything, but that was the year I got the Police Medal."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 23.3.2006
*Translator's Note: The headline and some of the text of this article require a brief gloss. "Komisario Palmu" was the creation of novelist Mika Waltari (1908-1979), a writer probably best-known internationally for The Egyptian and other historical novels in the same vein. To Finnish reders, however, he is remembered with equal affection for having created the character of the lovable but extremely grouchy Inspector Palmu of the Helsinki Police Department. The detective made his first appearance in 1939 in Kuka murhasi rouva Skrofin? (Who Killed Mrs. Skrof?), and the success of this led to two other novels and - perhaps even more significantly - to a quartet of very popular films from the 1960s. The name and character of Inspector Palmu (as played by the late Joel Rinne) is instantly recognisable to all but the youngest Finns, with his trademark sarcasm, cigar, bowler hat, and muffler.

More on this subject:
 WHO? A sports enthusiast with a yen for history

Links:
  Helsinki Immigration Police
  Internet Movie Database: Kaasua, Komisario Palmu!

JARMO HUHTANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jarmo.huhtanen@hs.fi