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While newspapers and TV channels discuss fratricide and fake encounters in India, here’s an astonishing report from Norway.
Policemen in Norway used their guns only twice in the entire 2014, neither of which killed or injured anyone, according to a new report.
This marks a slight decrease from 2013, when police shot their weapons three times, injuring two people, according to Police Threat or Use of Firearms 2002-2014 statistics.
Norwegian police brandished firearms on just 42 occasions in 2014, the lowest number of times they have drawn their weapons in the last twelve years, The Local reported.
The statistics show they have killed only two people in shootouts over the twelve year period, with fatal police shootings in 2005 and 2006.
Even in 2011, the year of the Utoya terror attacks staged by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed eight people in an Oslo bomb blast before shooting 69 people, the Norwegian police only fired one shot.
Norway, a country of over 5 million people, has a relatively low crime rate in comparison to western European countries with large populations, according to RT News.
Most offences are petty crime, such as street burglary, not linked to any organised violence.
Photograph: Reuters