17-year-old Mohammed spat in a police officer’s face, kicked him with his knee and shouted abuse. On three occasions, he was caught carrying a machete in a public place. Sentence: 50 hours’ community service.
On Monday, Romerike and Glåmdal District Court convicted the 17-year-old of seven criminal offences: assault on a public official, possession of drugs, three instances of carrying a knife in a public place and two breaches of a restraining order.
The court itself concluded that the appropriate sentence would be 50 days’ imprisonment. However, as the boy was under 18 when he committed the offences, he can only be sent to prison if it is ‘particularly necessary’. The court did not consider this to be the case.
The 50 hours must be completed within five months. That works out at just over two hours a week on average.
Document has anonymised the 17-year-old convicted boy, as he is a minor.
On the night of Saturday 14 June, two police officers held a young girl between them at Oslo S. They had been called out to deal with two unruly girls and were on their way to the police car. Then the 17-year-old came running up. According to the judgement, he had been trying to chat up the girl.
He was told to stand back, but refused. He was ordered to leave the scene. He refused again and said “chill out, nigger” to the officers. They handcuffed him.
As the officers led him into the police van, he spat in one of their faces. The spit hit his mouth. The officers laid him on the floor and called for backup. Another patrol arrived and fitted him with a spit mask. On the way, he called the officers “cunt-lickers”, “morning-fuckers” and “niggers”.
When he complained of pain in his arm, the officers loosened their grip. He then kicked the officer in the side with his knee.
The officers had to let go of the girl they were in the process of arresting, because the 17-year-old was too unruly.
At the police station in Grønland, the police discovered he was under 18, and they rang his father. Whilst waiting for his parents to arrive, he asked the officer if he ‘didn’t have any balls’, because he wanted to fight him.
Whilst searching the 17-year-old, they found a folding knife in a chain around his neck. It took about two hours before his father and brother arrived to collect him, despite the fact that Lillestrøm is only about 20 minutes away.
The knife that receives the most attention in the judgement was seized by the police at Oslo Central Station on 28 March.
The 17-year-old had a bowie knife tucked into his trouser waistband. According to the seizure report, it weighed 558 grams, was 38 centimetres long and had a 25-centimetre-long blade made of four-millimetre-thick steel. In court, he explained that he was carrying the knife in self-defence.
Eight days earlier, the police had confiscated a folding knife from him at Jernbanetorget.
He is by no means unknown to the police. In May 2025, he was fined for carrying a knife, and on 7 April he was granted a discretionary dismissal for possession of a cannabis vape. Six weeks later, he was caught with 30 grams of hashish in a snus tin at Lillestrøm station. Although he was banned from entering Lillestrøm town centre, he breached the ban twice.
The District Court itself refers to the severity of violence against the police.
– ‘The clear starting point in case law is that violence against the police must be met with an unconditional prison sentence, even in the case of less serious offences,’ wrote the Supreme Court in 2020.
According to the District Court, the violence against the police alone, taken in isolation, would have warranted around 35 days’ imprisonment.
The factors that reduced the sentence were his age and his confession. The confession was only made during the main hearing and therefore resulted in a sentence reduction of just 10–15 per cent, the court states. As recently as March, he denied criminal liability and did not want a community service order.
In court, the 17-year-old said that he had stopped using cannabis, broken away from the criminal milieu and wanted to become a mechanic. According to him, the turning point came when he was fitted with an electronic tag on 4 July – the same day he breached his curfew for the second time.
He is now attending a school programme for young people requiring close supervision, and works up to 30 hours a week as a chef. A community policing officer described his progress as ‘outstanding’.
The prosecutor, police solicitor Anne Wik Taxerås, herself requested 55 hours’ community service. The court settled on five hours less. Defence lawyer Per Ove Marthinsen requested the most lenient sentence. The boy’s guardians had been summoned to the trial but did not attend.
The verdict was unanimous. The deadline for appeal is 17 November.
Whilst his progress is described as positive by community policing officers, he is due to appear in the district court in January, charged with several robberies alongside five others.
– ‘This does not affect the court’s assessment when determining the form of punishment,’ the court writes.
