Do Not Read This Blog!

It was a quiet day shift as we patrolled the streets of Kallio and Sörnäinen. The afternoon sun was out, and every now and then a familiar breeze of cannabis drifted in through the open car window — part of the neighborhood’s natural ecosystem. Kallio and Sörnäinen are old working-class neighborhoods in central Helsinki — once known mostly for cheap rents, heavy drinking, and open drug use. In the last decade they’ve become trendy and increasingly expensive, full of cafés, students, artists, and young professionals. But beneath the new polish, the old reputation is still alive. The same streets also attract addicts, dealers, and the kind of people who migrate naturally toward places where boundaries are loose and no one asks too many questions. We rolled through the narrow streets toward Pengerpuisto —  “Ridge Park” . It sits on a small rise between the neighborhoods. It’s a popular place to drink, smoke, and do business that doesn’t make it onto tourist maps. Local drug deale...

Back when helmets were still made of steel, men were made of something close to it, and mobile phones were nothing but heavy bricks of plastic and metal, I was still a young police cadet. One of the assignments during our fourth training module was night-time security duty at the Police University College in Tampere. On paper it was “practical training in surveillance and situational awareness.” In reality, it was the school saving money by having students guard the campus instead of hiring an actual security company. I didn’t mind. A night shift meant I could sleep through the morning lectures in my shared dorm room without guilt. The campus sits in Hervanta, a rough-around-the-edges student district in Tampere. The local shopping centre—an aging concrete beast—pulses with life every weekend as students stagger in for cheap food, hangover cures and late-night supplies. The police school itself is hidden behind tall fences, cameras and access gates. It needs to be. The campus holds veh...

My name is  Samuli Rajamäki . I am a former police officer from Helsinki, the capital of Finland — a country often promoted as  the happiest nation on Earth . In addition to its reputation for happiness, Finland is also known for its brutal climate, long months of darkness, heavy drinking culture and historically high suicide rates. Despite limited funding and one of the lowest police-to-citizen ratios in Europe, the Finnish Police consistently ranks among the most trusted institutions in the world. Public confidence scores approach levels seen only in regimes like North Korea — with the crucial difference that Finland also ranks among the least corrupt countries globally. This blog is where I write about policing from the inside. Stories that never appear in happiness rankings. Stories about the parts of society people prefer not to face: substance abuse, violence, mental illness, suicide, death. And sometimes, small moments of humanity inside a bureaucratic machine built for...