Copenhagen hippy commune fights back against drug gangs

COPENHAGEN, Apr 07 (BBC): For more than 50 years, the hippy neighbourhood of Christiania has been a haven of counter-culture, in the very heart of the Danish capital Copenhagen.
Popular with tourists, it is known for its liberal attitude towards cannabis and the infamous drug market, Pusher Street.
However, in recent years organised criminals have increasingly taken over, and growing violence has rattled the community.
Residents have now had enough. In a bid to reclaim the street from drug dealers, this Saturday they began physically digging it up, armed with spades and crowbars.
There were celebratory claps and cheers of "Christiania", as locals prised up heavy cobblestones and tossed them into wheelbarrows, one by one.
"We've been breaking up Pusher Street. It's closing down today. So it's a kind of a closing party," said local Pia Jagger, carrying away a big stone. Now this roughly 100-metre stretch of road has a new sign reading: "Pusher Street is closed today."
"In the last five or six years I haven't been here that much because I have kids and I didn't feel very safe," said onlooker Sofie Ostergaard. "Today I brought all three of them, and they're helping."
Standing beside a rainbow-coloured cargo bike, 40-year resident Hulda Mader told the BBC: "It feels like a historic moment. We're very happy for it." A spokeswoman for Christiania's press group, she said: "We are very tired of people saying Pusher Street is Christiania. It is not."
Though it's illegal in Denmark, cannabis has been sold openly in Christiania for decades. But many of the original local dealers have been pushed out, as organised gangs have wrested control. In the last three years, there has been a spate of stabbings and fatal shootings.
According to Ms Mader, the community reached a turning point about a year-and-a-half ago. "Two people came in," she said. "They shot one dead and injured four others. That was absolutely where we said this is enough."
"We're going to dig it up. We're gonna change all the infrastructure. Then we're gonna start building other stuff." "For us hash is not the problem, it's the money in it," Mette Prag, a representative from the Freetown Christiania Foundation, told reporters.
"But the last years with all the violence and all the fighting, we cannot have it in our society. That's why now this chapter must come to an end." Among those present on Saturday was Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard.
"It is a day that is the beginning of the end, of the very, very deep roots that organised crime gangs have established in this neighbourhood in Copenhagen," he said.
"To safeguard that Christiania will continue to be a vibrant, colourful, creative part of Denmark, it needs to be a place without organised criminal gangs." Tourists are still welcome to visit Christiania, he added, but not for drugs.
Ordinarily this T-shaped strip is the epicentre of Denmark's cannabis trade, where so-called pushers hawk weed from behind makeshift stacks of beer crates and plywood market stalls, labelled with names like Green Rocket and Blue Dream. Just three days ago, the BBC counted roughly 20 sellers.
Until the late 1990s it was informally tolerated, says Kim Moeller, a professor of criminology at Malmo University. But that ended in the 2000s, as the market grew bigger and more visible. He says about five different gangs now operate, and that has brought more disputes.
"If you have a conflict between groups in Copenhagen, they can most likely find each other in Pusher Street where they can shoot at each other," says Deputy Police Inspector Simon Hansen, who oversees the Copenhagen police force's operation in Christiania.