01x05 - Episode 5

[bunniefuu]

[tense music playing]

[music becomes intriguing]

I believe it was a little after midnight

when my phone rings.

ALLAN BEIER

FORMER POLICE OFFICER

[telephone ringing]

I answer, and it's the duty officer

at Station City.

And he gets straight to the point,

he tells me simply,

"Allan, two of your colleagues

were shot in Christiania."

[ominous music playing]

[echoing g*nf*re]

The call had gotten me out of bed,

and I remember I was just standing there,

frozen, holding my phone.

My brain can hardly keep up.

It's so much to process at once,

and it felt out of the blue.

It really made my head spin, you know,

going from being fast asleep

to receiving that kind of information.

I felt so much anger in that moment.

I was mad at Christiania and I was mad

that we hadn't been able to shut it down

because this wouldn't have happened.

I thought "If the politicians and

the police had gotten their sh*t together,

we could've steamrolled all of this,

and those two officers

wouldn't have been shot."

That's all that was running

through my head.

I ask him to repeat himself,

a few times.

Finally, he says,

"I know it's a lot to take in.

Two officers were shot in Christiania."

I just say, "I'll be right there."

[beeping]

[Larsen] What started

as a idealistic hippie dream,

ended in a brutal nightmare.

[The Wholesaler] If there's demand

for something and there's money to make,

people like me

will sweep in and capitalize.

[Larsen] On one side are the drug dealers,

and on the other side,

you have the combat-ready cops.

When we strike, we follow through.

[screaming]

[Larsen] And in the middle

are the Christianites.

SHAME

I felt like a hostage caught

between drug dealers and cops.

[man] What the hell are you doing?!

They wanted to hurt each other.

[siren blaring]

It was It was w*r.

We thought, "f*ck them."

I've been in situations thinking,

"You're dead. You won't survive."

We got to the point

that we had always feared.

[g*n blast]

Someone was shot dead on Pusher Street.

That k*lling was the last straw in the

decades of fighting over Pusher Street.

g*ng w*r

PUSHER STREE

[intriguing music playing]

[Norton] In March of 2014,

the police conducted a raid

that resulted in the arrests of well over

80 people in Operation Nordlys.

CARSTEN NORTON

AUTHOR & JORNALIS

They had accumulated

a huge amount of evidence

through the use of audio surveillance

and wiretaps.

They had detailed knowledge

about each stall.

They found account books and ledgers

that recorded sales and transactions.

From those documents,

they developed a sense

of which sellers handled

the largest volumes.

They were mapping what had happened

transactionally on Pusher Street

over the course of a two-year period.

The overall purpose of the operation

was that the police wanted to intervene,

especially against the Hells Angels

to prove that the biker group played

a controlling role in Pusher Street.

Of this large group

of more than 80 people arrested,

many of whom were believed to have

had connections to the Hells Angels,

ultimately only one biker was convicted.

Despite the scale of the arrests,

results proved extremely limited.

It would be fair to say

that Operation Nordlys

was a resounding failure for the police.

[Larsen] A consequence of the arrests

was that police had created

a power vacuum on Pusher Street.

It became easier for outsiders

to get into the cannabis market

because the old unity between

the drug dealers started falling apart.

[Carlo] They came in

and took all of our people.

Everyone that was involved

in the community.

They just removed all the people and

dealers who talked to the interlopers

CARLO

CHRISTIANITE

and, uh, made sure they stayed away.

The people who were arrested

were the dealers who had

an understanding of the proper way

to do business and forge a path.

There was no one left to run Christiania

because they had been jailed.

So now all of the old dealers

started to vanish.

KARL BILLE

ARTIST & MUSICIAN

The people with good vibes,

who saw the big picture,

the ones who made sure everyone was

behaving themselves, they're gone.

[contemplative music playing]

[Carlo] There was a huge shift.

New people started coming,

and then they very quickly started

rising up the food chain.

So, in response, the young

Christianites had to start selling

and do their best to take over.

The old-timers weren't around anymore,

to help keep an eye on things.

Young folks covered

for the ones causing trouble.

They weren't ready for the task,

it was obvious.

Anybody could see it.

So the newcomers ended up

becoming the violent element

of the new Pusher Street,

it was a quick change.

Things got sinister.

[tense music playing]

[Nikolaj] These brand new tensions

mounted overnight.

Before, you could talk freely with people.

NIKOLAJ

FORMER GOFER

But the atmosphere got rougher.

The good vibes and energy,

it completely vanished.

You used to know the sellers.

Suddenly, stalls were run by strangers.

These stalls had been such an important

part of the Christiania community.

MATILDE

CHRISTIANITE

The sellers and the people knew

each other and had a relationship.

There was a certain freedom felt

by the people who were selling cannabis,

and it just it went away entirely.

I mean, you didn't know

the people you were dealing with.

All of a sudden, it was a deeply,

deeply shady business.

[Mathilde] Everybody's wearing masks,

and you can clearly tell

who the dealers are.

The masks cover their noses,

and they wear sunglasses

and dark clothing.

People hang camouflage

netting above the stalls.

Everything becomes so closed off,

and you can't even see who's in there.

The dealers want to be completely

anonymous, and they're not very nice.

[Bille] It got worse, rougher,

and much more covered up.

One time an old friend hugged me,

and I could feel

they were wearing a bulletproof vest.

And I was like, "That is far out.

Are they afraid of being shot?

What's going on here? This is crazy.

Pusher Street used to be so

so friendly and nice."

Everything became so brutal.

It really got rough.

I actually stopped going

to Pusher Street. At all.

It lost it's identity,

it wasn't fun anymore.

If you needed weed, you tried

to find a dealer who was nice.

[Larsen] Something surprising happens

to the cannabis market in Christiania.

The stalls on Pusher Street

still belong to the Christianites,

but there's a shortage of people

to actually run the sales aspect.

Guards, cutters, and gofers

are all in short supply.

So for the first time

since it's inception,

the Christianites are forced

to compromise with their own rules

for running Pusher Street.

They start letting in outsiders.

So now, people who don't live

in Christiania

are being allowed to sell

cannabis on Pusher Street,

under the condition

that a Christianite owns the stand.

[tense music continues]

There was a marked change in the people

dealing cannabis on Pusher Street.

These guys were much less experienced

and were much younger.

I mean many of them were just teenagers.

These young guys got sucked in,

and were into playing very active,

high-risk roles.

You had to know a Christianite with a

certain amount of influence in Christiania

to open a stall for you.

But That rule didn't last long.

THE SOLDIER

Uhh Pretty soon others started

throwing their weight around.

Then they just started taking over.

I started working the streets

when I was 13, 14 years old,

and I've been there ever since.

A long time.

I would help the dealers stand guard

or sometimes even tend the stalls.

Mostly, I just walked around

and watched, you know,

just keeping tabs on what was going on.

If people were being difficult because

they didn't get what they wanted,

I'd involve some of the guys who I knew

were always willing

to kick someone's a*s,

and we'd give them a beating.

Or if some customer was complaining,

we would make them shut up.

[Beier] The underlying concept of

Christiania as this utopia and sanctuary

where you could go

to enjoy a joint once in a while,

that couldn't exist anymore.

Not when the players

were so desperate to sell cannabis,

they were recruiting children

to help them.

I received reports that people as young

as 15 years old were working as couriers,

and were easily making as much

as 10,000 kroner a day.

It was no secret, there was an awful lot

of money to be made for a young person,

if they were willing to be involved

in bringing cannabis into Christiania.

When you see this kind of activity,

it's the ultimate proof of this

as a hardcore business being carried out

by a criminal organization.

It felt strange to talk

with childhood friends

who hung out with people that didn't

represent anything I stood for.

Those talks stopped feeling

like catching up

and more like walking on eggshells.

They seemed to have no qualms

about turning to violence.

It sucked to have to cut ties

with lifelong acquaintances,

but I just couldn't accept

the way they lived.

And it got to this point

where I couldn't reach them to ask,

"Why the hell are you doing this?"

They would just shut you out.

They didn't care.

They violated our constitution,

and when they did,

the constitution became

all the more irrelevant to outsiders.

[dramatic music playing]

[Mathilde] It made Christiania

feel unsafe.

We held community meetings

where people voiced their concerns.

The general feeling was that people

were scared and unnerved.

They would ruin the meetings.

They sat in the back,

smoking and making a commotion.

It was a complicated mix of emotions.

It was hard to get my head around

all the things that were going on.

There was a lot of pushback against

the dealers, more than ever before.

At the same time,

people understood the reasons

why things were turning out

the way they were,

and to some extent

they were even sympathetic.

Many people thought

it was the police's fault.

I found the whole situation

to be very uncomfortable,

and I started to avoid Pusher Street

as best I could.

[Lykke] The market does return.

And There are still police raids.

OLE LYKKE

CHRISTIANITE

Back! Stay back! Back!

[Lykke] There was a series

of violent incidents.

[people shouting]

It became a very turbulent place.

It all came to a head at the end

of August, 2016.

[g*nf*re]

In August of 2016,

the police went into Christiania

to track down a person whom they believed

played a role in Pusher Street.

At one point,

officers called out to the man.

POLICE

Instead of stopping and getting arrested

like the police had expected,

the person proceeded to pull out a g*n

and open fire on the officers.

[g*nf*re]

In the wake of the sh**ting,

investigators proceeded

to launch a full scale manhunt

to try and locate the sh**ter

and apprehend him.

At that time I was living

in Fredens Ark,

which is the building

where the sh**ting took place.

I looked over at my boyfriend,

and we both agree those were g*nshots.

We got up and went over

to look out the window,

But we couldn't really see

what was going on.

I had heard about an operation

going down in Christiania.

BJARNE CHRISTENSEN

FORMER OPERATIONS MANAGER

There had been a sh**ting. One officer,

injured and another, critically injured.

The atmosphere was somber.

Everyday you're walking around

in uncertainty.

Is he going to live or could he die?

If he survives,

what will his life be like?

No one knew what to do, but at some

point, you just have to move on.

[Beier] I ran out the door and drove

straight to Christiania with colleagues.

I was there, on the scene, a few hours

after the sh**ting had taken place.

[tense music playing]

[Christensen] A command center

was set up to find the man who did it,

and I was called in to lead the manhunt.

We put our full force

behind tracking down the perpetrator.

We knew there was something

we could do, that we weren't powerless.

So we were definitely on the offense.

I said, "We've got to get this guy."

It was crucially important,

so all available resources were assigned.

[music fades]

The police establish a command center,

which is referred to as a KSN.

They call in a rapid response unit,

also known as Romeo patrol,

which is then backed up

by regular street cops.

[dramatic music playing]

[Lykke] The manhunt is on.

Three, four, five hours pass,

until four in the morning,

with this strange divide in Christiania.

People in Woodstock and Nemoland act

as if nothing happened.

At Fredens Ark and Pusher Street,

it's teeming with police.

The officers had shut down

all of the entrances

except for the one at Grå Hal.

When I arrive, I was met with a much

different atmosphere in Christiania.

The hostility I experienced

so many times before is gone.

I'm trying to take everything in

and I notice that all of my colleagues

have a seriousness about them

that I've rarely seen.

We sent in our best people,

which is our AKS team,

kind of like a SWAT team.

So we've got what we call

"the Romeo patrol" at the level below.

These guys are regular officers

with patrol cars

who have closed down certain areas.

This makes it so he can't get out

and we'll spot him. We box him in.

[Lykke] It's crawling

with armed police officers,

and it's obvious

that they are not to be trifled with.

[officer] Show me your hands!

Some of our Romeo officers

start a sweep of the area

because the intelligence we received

suggested that the perpetrator

is still there at large in Christiania.

We had brought in specially trained police

officers carrying r*fles with sights,

which enabled them

to combat significant threats.

When a unit like that goes in,

they proceed very tactically.

They systematically go though

and search every area in Christiania.

So once an area is searched and cleared,

they seal off all entry to it from others.

The goal is,

once they've cleared everything,

they can come back to us

and confidently say,

"He's not here

because we would've found him."

[tense music playing]

It's now very early in the morning,

the clean-up is complete,

and the work is done.

I go home. I change out

of my uniform and finally go to sleep.

When I wake up the next morning,

this situation is everywhere,

all over the media.

An officer is in critical condition

after being shot in the head

during an altercation in Christiania.

Yes, the situation is extremely serious.

We have a young officer

who is in critical condition.

It was hard to come to terms

with the fact

that police officers were being shot at.

It was super problematic.

The sh**ting brought all my concerns

about Christiania rushing back.

To me, Christiania was a bad place.

It was dangerous

and it was completely compromised.

Cannabis was being sold by

and to school age kids,

and that crossed a line

that I just couldn't accept.

It needed to be shut down.

[ethereal music playing]

The next morning, I wake up to take

my two-year-old son to kindergarten.

And we can't get out.

There are armed police officers

with machine g*ns all around the house.

The doorbell rings,

and the police come in to interview us.

In that moment

I'm just trying to stay calm,

you know, so I don't freak out my son.

So I am able

to drop him off at kindergarten,

but I can't return for several hours.

The next day, a report comes in

that police made contact with the sh**ter.

[reporter] The sh**ting resulted in an

intense manhunt with search warrants,

canine units,

and increased police presence.

They were conducting

a search when they saw him on foot.

He fired shots

from a small-caliber p*stol,

and succeeded in hitting

one officer's bulletproof vest twice.

The AKS team acted with unhesitating

precision and efficiency.

The officers returned fire immediately

in a controlled response,

and the sh**ter was quickly subdued

and no longer a threat.

A doctor did try to save his life,

but he ultimately succumbed

to his injuries.

I messaged my colleagues

involved in the incident in Christiania,

to let them know

that the perpetrator had been shot

- The manhunt was over.

- [contemplative music playing]

The shootings with the police

and the ensuing manhunt

start to make more Christianites question

the sale of cannabis on Pusher Street.

After that, the Christianites finally

started cooperating with the police.

The people stepped up

and said, "This is unacceptable.

Something needs to change."

A lot of people are no longer

comfortable with Pusher Street.

It was a sentiment that built up over

many years, involving many incidents.

The sh**ting and manhunt

was the final straw.

It was too crazy

that violence like that could happen.

That night

there was a big community meeting.

People were crying,

and everyone was very distraught.

You don't move to Christiania

because you sign up for a waiting list

for an apartment

and now there happens to be room.

You do it because you have

certain values, dreams, and wishes.

It involves a specific worldview

and belief system.

With all the violence, it became clear

that that dream had been shattered.

I mean it's is not something

you want to tolerate or condone.

A large group of people gathered to pray

for the individuals that were hit,

and for the officer who was shot.

At that point, it was unknown

whether he was going to survive,

and understandably a lot of people

were very scared and emotional about that.

So enough is enough.

For a while, there was a very real chance

that one of my colleagues

was going to pass away.

Thankfully, he did survive,

and is doing well

under the circumstances today.

After that incident we all became

more acutely aware that

we might have to use our g*ns one day.

That really instilled an awareness in me

that things had become very dangerous.

[contemplative music playing]

[Lykke] We agreed

that it had gone too far.

When we brought it to a vote,

we met with very little opposition.

Because very few drug dealers

even wanted to be anywhere

near Pusher Street after that incident.

It was an easy vote to pass.

[Mathilde] We agreed it was time

to take down Pusher Street,

and I really believed

we might change something.

The day came and I put on

messy clothes and pitched in,

removing screws and such.

There were a lot of young people

coming together for the cause.

Those of us who grew up here

have a special relationship to it.

We know its rhythms

and its contradictions.

We don't share the same romantic ideals

about Pusher Street as some do.

To us, it isn't just a place

of cannabis and hippie dreams.

To us, it's messy, compromised,

and in need of hard choices.

[Carlo] We have to act.

We have to make a move

and tear it down. We had enough.

We realized, it's time to go down there

and say, "f*ck you, Pusher street!"

We tore it all down, and we dropped off

a stall at the parliament building.

Our message to them was that,

"We've demolished Pusher Street

because of this tragedy

and we've lost control.

If legislation doesn't change,

there's no doubt

that it will come back just like before."

Today, the Christianites

have made a strong demonstration.

There's a lot of political

will on display.

They want to clean up Pusher Street

and get rid the violence

but we also need

to prevent it from returning.

If the Christianites

are leading the conversation,

and the police are doing their jobs,

I think we can make it happen.

[contemplative music continues]

So now, more Christianites

are in agreement with politicians

on the matter of ending cannabis dealing.

Over nearly 40 years, Christiania

facilitated open cannabis trade,

which has been so lucrative that criminal

organizations are ready to k*ll

to keep their influx of millions.

There's too much money involved

for the dealers to go quietly.

Some of the leading Christianites

believe the solution to the problems

brought on by cannabis is obvious.

There's only one solution.

Everything else is--

Because they won't legalize it,

Christiania has no responsibility?

Yes, we have a responsibility to stay away

from violence and g*nf*re

and the incidents

that are happening far too often.

We spend a lot of time

at community meetings

mindfully discussing

how best to handle this.

It would be foolish to think

we can end it all at once.

It's a complex fight,

and it's not something

that can be properly resolved

in a week or two.

[Beier] There has been tremendous

inefficiency from our politicians.

I just shook my head

when the Christianites said

that they were closing down Pusher Street,

and the politicians went, "Great."

I knew it wasn't going to happen,

and I became incredibly frustrated

that our elected officials took their word

and would settle for that.

It was naive.

[Larsen] It went as predicted.

Customers are still out there, and

the dealers come back to Pusher Street,

but Pusher Street has changed.

And not for the better.

[Mathilde] There was

an extremely paranoid atmosphere.

It was incredibly uncomfortable.

I worked at a laundromat,

and there would be people hiding things

inside the washing machines.

People had drugs stashed near their

houses, in gardens, or on cargo bikes.

All these different forms of concealment.

That became a growing problem.

In my building, these strange people

were running up and down the stairs

with all kinds

of miscellaneous stuff, or money.

I couldn't tell who they were.

They didn't say hi,

they spat on the stairs.

They just ran up and down,

masked and anonymous,

and it made the whole place

feel tense and dangerous.

[dramatic music playing]

They tried a masking ban, which

was enacted in community meetings

and it made sense on paper, but

practically speaking we had

very few options to enforce sanctions.

The rule just existed on paper.

If people didn't follow it,

that was the end of the matter.

There was no effective follow-through.

At best you could call someone out as you

walked past or mention it in the street,

but where everyone wore masks

it was almost impossible

to do anything beyond that.

We liked the open cannabis market

where you knew what was going on.

It kept out hard drugs and made sure

the rules were properly followed.

NO THANK YOU! TO POLICE

SURVEILLANCE IN KRISTIANIA

When the police started

putting in surveillance

and installed cameras

the size of a pinhead,

the dealers took countermeasures.

[people cheering]

The police haven't given up,

and they still use any means necessary.

The arrests are getting very intense,

and the general sense

is one of not feeling safe.

It is just extremely unpleasant.

[people shouting]

That feeling is becoming more

and more prevalent on Pusher Street.

[dramatic action music playing]

[Lykke] There were a lot of raids

on the new stalls that had been rebuilt.

And it really came to a head around 2018.

[people shouting]

I'm hit!

[Lykke] The street took

a four-day break in an effort

to remove the worst offenders.

The police's response to the matter

was to start conducting daily raids.

They also did weekly raids, where they

would come and remove all the stalls.

So now the stalls are makeshift.

The street was out of control.

So at this point,

the support that we had

and the attempts made

to regulate the street started crumbling.

It crumbled more and more

and more and more.

[siren blaring]

[Larsen] After the sh**ting, the old rules

that have been maintained for years

are thrown out with the bathwater.

Criminal factions start to gain more

and more power in Pusher Street,

and the street gangs begin to move in.

[Lykke] All of a sudden, over 50% of

the dealers in the stalls are immigrants.

It's clear there are almost

no Christianites left.

Those who are have no particular say

in what goes on.

[Norton] So now if we take a closer look

at the underworld in Copenhagen,

it's become apparent

that more new factions had emerged.

While the bikers reigned

with an iron fist for many years,

they now silently bore witness

to a fleet of new players

taking the stage who usurped power

in a way that could not be prevented.

I think it would be fair to say that

the Hells Angels were caught off guard

in regard to the new generations

who were forming new groups.

[intriguing music playing]

If you look at the street gangs

and Pusher Street,

the Hells Angels were now

weakened in their presence.

The slate was washed clean,

and it was crawling with new factions.

They wanted a piece of the action.

They wanted a presence on Pusher Street

and a stake in the market.

[Beier] In the following years,

the cannabis market in Christiania

was challenged by Satudarah,

now known as the Comanches.

Satudarah took on the Hells Angels

and Bandidos in that market,

to get a piece of the action.

Their arrival upset the existing balance

and brought new competition,

which increased tensions

and made everything more volatile.

They swooped in and took over

the Hells Angels' position and power.

The old bikers had to accept

that there were bigger fish in the sea.

Eventually, we see LTF wanting to enter

the cannabis market in Christiania.

Now all of a sudden we have four factions

fighting over the marketplace.

[The Soldier] They only worked

The Street with us for a few months

before it all broke down.

That's when it went horribly awry,

and it just became completely unstable.

[contemplative music playing]

The new, more motley market

in Christiania

is much tougher

and much more unpredictable.

Immigrant groups went about things

in a much harsher way

than a biker club would.

Basically, the bikers were afraid of them.

Immigrants had more power

and wiggle room in the street.

If you had done something wrong,

they just humiliated you.

And that created a fear in the bikers,

even though they also

did that kind of stuff.

The difference was that the newcomer

groups were willing to make scenes

and escalate things quickly,

and that made the atmosphere

in the streets a lot more dangerous.

They were just way more hardcore.

The drug dealers, who were sent to prison

during Operation Nordlys,

are getting out, and they come back

to a Pusher Street

that is hard to recognize.

I got out and returned to a chaotic

environment. People were under pressure.

TONNY KLUCK

FORMER DRUG DEALER

Everything was pared back and torn down.

There were all these new stalls

and they had like military netting

and people were in masks.

I realized that

I didn't really know anybody,

and the atmosphere

had completely changed.

There's maybe 100, 150 new people.

[Mathilde] Christiania was able to coexist

with the criminal cannabis market

for so long

because there was this mutual trust

where we all accepted one another.

When the dealers and the cannabis

market, you know isolate themselves,

feel paranoid, hide away,

and become anonymous,

that foundation of trust crumbles.

You can't build a relationship with

those people, or under those conditions.

[intriguing music playing]

[Lykke] The beginning

of the end of Pusher Street

came with Operation Nordlys.

It gained traction

with the police sh**ting,

and then came the situation in 2018,

where the immigrants started moving in.

Pusher Street was

in a terrible state of decay.

15-year-olds on vacation from Greenland

were selling cannabis just for fun.

In the end, the street

was totally out of control.

It had devolved

into something unrecognizable.

When I retired as a field officer in 2019,

I saw an even more complex Christiania.

One with more cannabis, more violence,

and more conflict than ever before.

Those tendencies were already visible

when we started there in the early 2000s,

and by the time I left,

they had only deepened.

So there really seemed to be

no easy answer.

Only the prospect

of fighting it politically

or trying long,

slow measures like resocialization.

Even those options felt limited. There was

no clear, realistic solution on the table.

In the end, it unfolded into what we

in the 2000s had feared most:

multiple biker gangs

fighting over the same market

and prepared to sh**t and k*ll for it.

I was I was not optimistic

about Christiania's future.

I saw no political will

to take the decisive steps needed,

and many of the Christianites

themselves showed little interest

in changing the situation.

And um At the same time,

the police were caught in a bind

without solid political backing.

The force and its leadership were under

pressure throughout those years,

trying their best to respond

with limited tools and little support.

[dramatic action music playing]

[woman] Good Evening,

What I'm about to say tonight

will have profound consequences

for all Danes.

[quiet dramatic music playing]

On March 11th, 2020,

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen

shut down the country

to implement coronavirus restrictions.

This also had an impact

on Pusher Street, in Christiania.

We closed off Christiania to everybody

except those who were actually from there.

Fences and gates were put up

on Pusher Street,

so you only ever met other Christianites.

A lot of people got a chance to experience

reconnecting with their neighbors.

Christiania is one of Denmark's

most visited tourist destinations.

In spring, when you look down the street,

it's completely full of people.

Closing things off presented a challenge

for the community.

We had to figure out how to come together

and begin having new relationships

with our neighbors.

It felt like how I remembered it,

from when I was living

in Christiania as a child.

[mysterious music playing]

I was going for evening strolls

down the street

and revisited an area

I hadn't been to in many years

because prior, I felt unsafe there.

I sat down in the middle

of Pusher Street and just gazed at it.

The bright lights that lit up the street

in the evening light

It was

It was magical.

It was mind-blowing to reclaim that place.

I had two kids at that point,

and I could let them go outside

without feeling fearful of what could

happen when they go outside.

It was incredibly liberating,

and it was a huge eye-opener for me

about how much Pusher Street

affected my personal life

and what it could be like

to live in Christiania,

if we were to um,

go about things differently.

That's why I live there.

In one way, it's a joy,

and in another way, it's a sadness,

you know, because I realized

how negatively this place that I love

has affected my life.

[bird cawing]

When we had to close down

for coronavirus,

our customers couldn't find

cannabis in Copenhagen,

so they came to Christiania.

[Lykke] That resulted in more

than a little bit of

"opportunistic trading,"

as the police called it.

It was happening on the ramparts,

and on street corners,

squares, in the subway

Deals happened quickly and openly,

often by people

who looked rough and unpredictable.

It was so visible and brazen,

but officers were reluctant to step in.

[ethereal music playing]

[Mathilde] We heard talk

of it happening in Christianshavn.

They were experiencing an unprecedented

level of dealing at the time as well,

but they weren't tolerating it.

That was a great inspiration

to me, actually.

Any time there had been fights

or conflicts,

I never called the police, although

in many instances I probably should have.

It didn't even cross my mind

that I could do that.

Suddenly, I'm seeing people

posting in Facebook groups

about how they film drug dealers

and how to call the police.

They've had enough of these people

standing there for two days straight.

It was eye-opening to see

how other communities were reacting

to what I had been living under.

People had a hard time understanding

why it's hard to live by Pusher Street

because many people don't know

what the street is now.

They still have this romanticized idea

about what the street was like

from back in the '90s

and the 2000s, when it was good.

I had felt alone, but now I can see myself

in other people

living in Christianshavn with kids

and see how they are living there.

The neighborhood council asked us

to move Pusher Street indoors,

so they wouldn't have

to look at it or deal with it.

Some people thought it was better

when it was indoors to begin with.

And some Christianites thought we should

go ahead and give the green light

to go back indoors

as a means of relieving the pressure.

We were a ragtag bunch of misfits

that opened a stall near Grå Hal,

to help out our regular customers.

We felt bad for them.

[Lykke] Then the dealers started selling

in smaller quantities.

So this gave people the choice

of getting mixed up with the th*gs outside

or getting the old treatment

from decent Christianites.

As it turned out,

the police weren't on board with that.

I went back to prison.

This time I served ten months.

[Norton] For the first time,

you saw an expansion

and migration of Christiania's product.

When Pusher Street shut down,

the cannabis trade moved to the city.

If you were looking to buy cannabis,

instead of leaving your home

and going in person to Christiania,

you could just stay home

and have it delivered via courier.

After COVID, Pusher Street

was resurrected in a new incarnation.

There were new factions

fighting for a presence in the street.

The gangs were making their move.

The atmosphere felt tenser

and more fraught than before,

with people on edge and a general sense

that things could turn ugly at any moment.

There were more violent clashes

and incidents that had once been shocking

now felt alarmingly routine.

Overall the environment

was becoming even more brutal.

ON THE NEXT EPISODE

[g*nf*re]

I hear the g*nshots,

and then it goes quiet.

I'm debating myself on,

"Are those fireworks or what?"

Then people start screaming.

He was shot several times.

He starts shaking. The paramedic is trying

to resuscitate him. But he's gone.

He goes,

"Hey, that's unacceptable. Get out."

All of a sudden [mimics g*nf*re] Yeah?

For me, it couldn't get worse.

I was on the edge.

It was like being in

an American a gangster movie.

My brother texted,

"I think our buddy's brother passed away."

He couldn't get a hold of his friend,

so I called my friend,

who confirmed that his little brother

was shot and k*lled.

IT HAS NOT BEEN POSSIBLE TO

PRESENT BANDIDOS MC AND LOYAL

TO FAMILIA WITH THE ALLEGATIONS

IN THE EPISODE.

COMANCHES MC AND HELLS ANGELS

MC WERE PRESENTED

WITH THE ALLEGATIONS,

BUT DID NOT COMMEN

BEFORE THE PROGRAM AIRED.

[tense dramatic music playing]