Can playing video games help police combat online crimes?

Euronews

03-07-2025

Would you play a video game with the police?
In Denmark, a special team of police officers stream online gaming to connect with young people and combat crimes such as fraud and sexual harassment.
'We try to be very aware of the evolution of online crimes,' Jeppe Torup, a police sergeant at the National Special Crime Unit of the Danish Police, told Euronews Next.
'It becomes a lot easier to commit crimes across language barriers and across countries and we need to be very aware of what is going on in the technosphere,' he added.
They also 'patrol' on popular platforms such as Discord, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, where they say they receive leads about suspicious behaviour from the communities.
The team was set up in 2022 to tackle the rise in online crime in Denmark.
'It was needed because we saw that a lot of the children are actually online most of the time – 99 per cent of the kids in Denmark are using social media or gaming platforms on a daily basis. So we have to be present there as well,' Sisse Birkebeck, the superintendent of the police team, told Euronews Next.
By October 2024, the 12-person special team had opened about 260 cases for police investigation, they said.
In the "operation room," there are four stations with gaming computers and streaming equipment, as well as a lounge area for filming TikToks.
Officers have different backgrounds and expertise and each of them has a designated number, which allows the followers to distinguish the officers.
Every week, they host a Q&A session on Twitch where they answer hundreds of questions per session about topics such as helmet rules when biking and what the special team does. Each session lasts three to five hours.
'There's nothing wrong with playing computer games. … The local police will play football with the kids in the street when they have time for it. It's the same thing we do,' said Mikkel Olsen, a police sergeant at the National Special Crime Unit of the Danish Police.
'Even though they might not be able to meet a police officer in real life, they can meet us in the digital sphere and we can have a conversation and help them if they need help in some way,' Olsen added.
They also play games popular in Denmark, such as Counter-Strike, with the country's young adults.
'We put a face on a police officer because the youth don't see the police a lot,' Birkebeck said.
'We create relations with the youth, and that's necessary,' she added.
Many young people fear talking openly when subjected to online crimes in fear of punishment, such as parents closing their accounts.
'They [the youth] can talk to them [the officers] if they see something's going on,' Birkebeck said.
'When we started up, we saw a lot of boys had been involved in some sort of grooming and had shared a lot of images with persons there. ... They told us that they haven't talked to anybody about this and they didn't want us to contact the parents because they were afraid that they would close down their Discord account,' she added.
'Build trust and relationships'
A question the team often receives is: 'Is this what my taxpayer money is going to?'
'Yes, this is of course paid by taxpayer money, but we absolutely believe that this is very well spent money because we are not that many people, we cover the entire country, we have an extremely big reach, we do a lot of different things, we do a lot of groundbreaking work,' Torup said.
Police say it's a way to build trust and relationships with young people that could pay off in the future.
'How would you reach an online Discord server for Minecraft players if you're a street officer? You don't come into people's homes, you don't go into the kids' bedrooms and join them on the PC,' Olsen said.
'We kind of need an angle on how we can join these young people, how we can reach these young people and how they can reach us in a way that they feel safe,' he added.
Officers say they make a conscious effort to present an approachable image and immerse themselves in online culture to understand the language adolescents use.
'We have this rule that we want to meet the children on their own terms, which means that we have to try to adapt to the language that they use,' Torup said.
'There's a natural boundary or bridge between us. And we need to try to cross that as much as we can and minimise the distance between us, so there's a lot of effort on our part,' he added.
Joining TikTok was another hurdle for the police, as the platform had not previously been used by the Danish police.
There were concerns about using a Chinese-owned app, as well as how police could maintain authority while participating in a space dominated by humour, trends, and viral content.
'We wrote down pages and pages about why we do it, what our concern is, how to handle stuff, how to answer citizens,' Torup said.
The team, Politiets Online Patrulje, now boasts over 787,000 followers across platforms such as Twitch, Discord, Instagram and TikTok.
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