This has got to be one of the worst cases of police mismanagement I’ve ever seen. Two boys were kidnapped by their mother after they visited her in Sweden. Their father who lives in Australia waited for six months as Swedish police searched but turned up nothing. Sick of waiting, the father flew to Sweden and took up the search himself. He found his boys in one week:

He flew to Sweden, rented a car and parked outside the home of the mother’s parents, on a hunch that they were harboring the fugitive mother and the children.

After a week of waiting, he crept out of his car under the cover of night and walked towards the front door.

For the first time in six months, he heard the sounds of his sons’ voices coming from inside the building.

“I didn’t even know the children were alive. The feeling was incredible,” the father told Expressen.

He then went back to his car and called the Swedish authorities, who entered the home, arrested the mother and reunited the boys with their father.

The local authorities said they had done their best to find the children during the six month investigation.

“We have looked at a number of addresses,” said Svante Melin, Detective Superintendent of Sodermanland Police in Sweden.

They tried their best they said. What a sorry excuse. Did it not occur to the police to go to the mother’s parents’ house? And if they weren’t there at the time, why not talk to neighbors to find out if there were kids coming and going when there weren’t any before?

The father is much more forgiving that I am:

The father said he would not criticise the police over their efforts in finding the boys.