Muscle Profiling in Sweden Still Going Strong

“Muscle profiling” is still going strong in Sweden according to recent reports appearing in the Swedish-language edition of “The Local” news website. In the latest muscle profiling case in Sweden, officers with the Polisen Malmö (Swedish Police Service in Malmö) decided to target an unusually muscular man they witnessed walking down the street in Malmö.

The man was obviously a bodybuilder whose hypermuscular physique made him stand out in a crowd. The police confronted him and proceeded to interrogate him about anabolic steroids. When they asked him directly if he had used the performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), the bodybuilder reportedly became evasive.

The bodybuilder's evasiveness led the police to search the man's two-room apartment as well as his mobile phone. The local newspaper Skånska Dagbladet reported that police found approximately 20,000 oral steroid tablets and an unidentified quantity of injectable steroid vials along with 150,000 Swedish kronor ($21,000).

The bodybuilder attempted to claim that the steroids were a personal supply for self-administration only. But the police did not buy the explanation. To make its case for steroid distribution, the police cited the discovery of packaging materials and SMS text message correspondences with numerous customers seeking to obtain steroids and PEDs.

The bodybuilder was sentenced to 21-months in jail. The woman with whom he shared the apartment was also sentenced to 18-months in jail. For the record, the woman denied any involvement or participation in the steroid-related activities of her partner. But she did acknowledge that she was aware of the presence of the steroids in the home and her partner's steroid use.

Muscle profiling is an accepted law enforcement practice in Sweden where police can detain and question bodybuilders about steroids/PEDs based on nothing more than their physical appearance. Muscle profiling as suggestive of steroid use has been used in dozens of case in recent years.

The most high-profile case of muscle profiling in Sweden involved the detention of IFBB professional bodybuilder Toney Freeman in 2010. The 150-pound Sundvall Police Chief Henrik Blusi decided to target the 300-pound Toney Freeman in a carefully orchestrated and highly-publicized bust.

Police Chief Blusi specifically targeted pro bodybuilders scheduled to attend the 2010 Fitness Festival in Göteborg. Blusi used promotional literature that placed Freeman at a guest appearance for a local supplement store of a specific date and time. He notified local media outlets of the pending raid of the supplement store to maximize publicity for his “war on bodybuilders” as 10 officers descended on the store, placed Freeman in handcuffs and escorted him to a police cruiser like a hardened criminal in front of numerous media cameras.

Freeman was detained solely based on his “extraordinary muscularity” and forced to provide a urine sample for the purposes of administering an anti-doping test. While Freeman admitted using doctor-prescribed testosterone and human growth hormone (hGH) and smoking marijuana while in Amsterdam, he was released and allowed to leave the country.

There has been some backlash in the Swedish justice system to the muscle profiling trend. A judge in Lund recently chastised the Polisen Lund for arresting a hypermuscular bodybuilder without supporting evidence. The judge said that “big muscles” alone were not adequate grounds for an arrest.

We do not know the extend of the police powers in Sweden. In the United States, the right to avoid self-incrimination is constitutionally-protected. Individuals also retain the right to refuse to police searches in the absence of a search warrant in most cases. (This right of refusal has been extended to mobile phones – and conceivably most other electronic devices – by a recent Supreme Court decision.)

However, Swedish bodybuilders may not have these same rights to privacy; once they are detained, they may be compelled to submit to searches of their persons and property as well as the contents of their bladders.

Source:

The Local. (August 7, 2014). Muscle man jailed after cops suspect steroids. Retrieved from //www.thelocal.se/20140807/police-ransack-house-of-unusually-large-man