Netflix’s Norwegian crime docuseries “Mr. Good: Cop or Crook?” is another typical Netflix limited series of the true-crime genre that tries to intrigue and raise pertinent questions about a criminal case that has been legally settled. The show’s focus is on a well-known and celebrated police officer in Oslo, who suddenly has his world crashing down as he is charged with being involved in drug trafficking. Overall, the documentary series “Mr. Good: Cop or Crook?” is not a shabby watch, as it provides an interesting build-up, but the content in itself is perhaps not too appealing or spicy enough for today’s true-crime expectations.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Mr. Good: Cop Or Crook?’ Plot Summary – What Is The Docu-Series About?
After growing up a shy and introvert boy, as his sister puts it, Eirik Jensen had joined the Norwegian police force in 1977, and he had never had to look back since then. With a personality and a style of attire very different from the usual policemen at the time, Eirik had always stood out from the usual. The man, who spent his personal off-duty time riding motorcycles and visiting clubs often frequented by people on the opposite side of the law, Eirik, had soon made a reputation for himself of having brilliant efficiency in being able to turn criminals into police informers. It was his ability to understand criminals and a certain mutual respect, as stated by multiple violent group members of the time, that made Eirik an easy policeman to communicate with and ultimately work with. Unlike every other policeman who had a stiff and moralistic view on how a police officer should act, Jensen always believed in keeping an open mindset, and in his personal time, would often spend time with gang members of the MC community. His first major break in the public eye came around 2006, when he was assigned the duty of leading a team of the police force to bring under control the various young violent groups killing and destroying each other in Oslo. With his extraordinary expertise in communicating with criminals and his impressive skills at leading from the front, Eirik quickly brought the situation under control as more and more young men started leaving their groups and lives of violence. This understandably made the man popular not just among top administrative officials but also among journalists, the public, and even the young men he helped reform indirectly.
Eirik had, of course, been able to achieve this with his efficient team of informants, but among them was a particular man named Gjermund Cappelen, who had worked with the policeman for a very long time, since 1993. After Cappelen was first arrested and quickly turned into a police informer by Jensen, he single-handedly helped the police in a major drug bust. The informer had approached Jensen, saying that members of the vicious Mob of the North were forcing him to bring in amphetamine from the Netherlands, and Jensen decided to make use of the chance. With Cappelen’s help, the Oslo police seized the drugs and arrested all the mobsters in a case known as “the plane drop case.” However, this apparent friendship was tossed to the wind after Cappelen was arrested in 2013, as the country shockingly heard the man’s revelations about the police officer held in the highest esteem. Cappelen claimed that Eirik Jensen had been directly involved in his drug trafficking business, in exchange for a large commission. This quickly began a court trial of Cappelen versus Jensen, in which the state prosecution itself also claimed charges of drug trafficking and gross corruption against the celebrated police official.
What Had Led To Eirik’s Downfall?
Earlier, in the 90s, Eirik had also been helped in another high-profile case by Cappelen, as the informer had quickly brought back valuable items that were stolen from the royal family museum, claiming that he got hold of them from his known art black marketeers. During this time, Norwegian police knew about Cappelen’s role as a dealer and distributor of hashish, but there was no evidence or hard information to arrest the man. For a long time, the police force kept tracking the man, and when the Oslo police got caught up in other cases, the police department of Asker & Baerum, a neighboring district of Oslo, took up the job, as Cappelen’s residence was in this area. It was during this time that the police first found tracks of Cappelen and Eirik meeting in a suspicious manner. Cappelen had also managed to get hold of the phone number of one of the officers following him, something that was impossible to do without any inside help.
On the other hand, the silent pursuit of Cappelen had revealed the man as a big trafficker of hash, who brought in the drug from other countries via roadways and then sold it in Norway. However, every time the police tried to get hold of the man, he seemed to get away, to cover his tracks carefully, almost as if he was receiving prior information about the police’s action. At the insistence of Asker & Baerum, Oslo police also sent in a team of their own to secretly monitor the situation, in a confidential mission named “operation silent.” The police, now tracking Cappelen’s call and message activity, find frequent contact between him and a renowned drug dealer, as Cappelen has made him his client. An unknown number, not in the police directory, is also found to be in very frequent contact with the man, and it is traced to have previously been registered to a Pakistani immigrant, codenamed “Karachi man.” The police kept tracking these conversations and were jubilant when the two planned to meet, meaning that who this Pakistani man was would finally be revealed to them. But they are shocked beyond their wits to find that it was Eirik Jensen who met the drug smuggler, and it was the head of the anti-drug force that was the mysterious “Karachi man.” The police quickly took their findings to Internal Affairs, the only administrative authority that could investigate the police, and Eirik was now being watched.
In a very short time, a big lead opened up against Cappelen when the police found traces of a storage facility in Norway where the man hid his imported drugs. The police trash the place over and seize the drugs, making it seem like a usual street-level robbery, hoping that Cappelen would have some reckless reaction to it with which they could nab him. Their plan works out flawlessly, as, within a couple of days, the man himself comes out of the shadows to complete a drug handover deal. The police follow him around, gather hard evidence, and instantly arrest him and his wife on charges of running a big-scale drug trafficking operation. After his drugs had initially been stolen, as he believed, Cappelen had asked for some help from Eirik, through their secretive and carefully code-worded text messages, but Eirik could do nothing. However, the police officer had shockingly not reported this large quantity of drugs going missing to his superiors, as should have been the case had his relationship with Cappelen been that of an officer and his informer. Eirik had even kept messaging the man after he was arrested, as he did not immediately know of the arrest, and it all seemed too fishy till the hashish trafficker confirmed it all. In his interrogations with the police while in custody, Cappelen claimed that Eirik had been directly involved in his operations and that the police officer regularly helped him bring the drugs over to Norway in exchange for money. Within a couple of months, in February of 2014, Eirik Jensen was arrested by the police, and a case of corruption and drug trafficking was brought against him.
What Was The Police Officer’s Defence Against The Allegations In The Court Case?
From the very time of his arrest, Eirik Jensen maintained that he had treated Gjermund Cappelen like just any of his other informers, with friendliness and as a tool to bring out information, but without ever crossing the boundary of the law. Much earlier, in the 90s, Eirik had helped Cappelen recover from a terrible drug addiction when the latter’s father had called upon the police’s help. On the brink of being sent to prison, Jensen can hardly believe that the man he had helped and protected so many times has now turned against him, throwing false accusations only to shorten his own prison sentence. In January 2017, a trial started at the Oslo district court in which Eirik tried to prove his innocence while more strange and suspicious evidence was presented against him. All the evidence collected under “operation silent” is brought to court, including photos and videos of their meeting and records of their frequently coded text messages. Cappelen claims the messages to have mostly been about the smuggling of drugs, and some even appear to be constant nags by Eirik about something, but the cop maintains that it was all strictly informant-based conversations. But soon, the strange actions of Eirik are brought to light, the first being that the police officer had immediately destroyed the phone with which he would talk with Cappelen, after he heard of his informer’s arrest. Although he now claims to have done so to protect his informers and the secrecy of his mission, such an act is very suspicious as a police officer would naturally want to provide their side of the conversation as evidence to prove that it was all indeed normal texting with an informer. The case against Eirik Jensen came with the harshest punishment in Norwegian law—imprisonment for 21 years, but his defense lawyers wanted to go for a complete acquittal. Perhaps because of this, in his testimony, Eirik denied having known anything about Cappelen’s large-scale drug smuggling business, which further raised more suspicions against the police officer, as it seemed highly unlikely that he was in such frequent contact with his supposed informer and yet did not know of his criminal activity.
Eirik had a response to this as well, claiming that he had no way to know about his informer’s crimes if his other informers or Cappelen himself did not tell him about it, as the police still had no evidence against the drug smuggler. In a further incriminating manner, a spike in the number of messages between Eirik and Cappelen had been noticed around the times when Cappelen was bringing in the drugs via highways. At this time, another contact in frequent conversation with Cappelen was also found. A contact name, “Mr. Good” was saved in his phone, and many of these messages exchanged between them were assurances of safety, perhaps implying that the police were not watching the man and so it would be safe to act. The prosecution heavily suggests that Mr. Good was indeed Eirik Jensen himself, who used a different number to talk about more risky things, and even language experts suggest that Mr. Good’s typing matched with that of Eirik. The police officer, being very lousy and irresponsible about maintaining paper records of his actions, perhaps very conveniently so, has no evidence to prove his claims of innocence. A regular cash flow (in Eirik’s name), adding up to be bigger than his salary, which Eirik deposited very strangely in bits from different bank branches, also matches with Cappelen’s claim that he used to pay the cop 500 kroner per kilo of hash ever since they started working together. Although the entire cash amount that Eirik was supposed to have gathered as drug-money was never found, a stash of cash unnaturally hidden inside a wall in his house now took Eirik beyond any point of safety. The bench of judges finally passes their judgment—they find Eirik Jensen guilty of partaking in and encouraging Cappelen’s hashish trafficking, and give him a prison sentence of 21 years, while reducing the drug smuggler’s to 15 years for having honestly presented everything in front of the law.
Soon after the judgment, Eirik and his defense team prepare to take their case to the court of appeals, based on the finding of Eirik’s current partner, Ragna Vikre. They stress the fact that the timings of the messages did not match the timings of the drug imports, and it was often the case that the messages of assurance were sent after the imports were completed. The prosecution argues that since only some of the imports could be tracked down by the police, it is possible that there were more imports carried out based on the messages and their timings. After all, it doesn’t really matter whether the two timelines match, as the simple confirmation of safety provided by a police officer to a drug smuggler is enough to incriminate the man. Eirik and Ragna breathe a sigh of relief, though, when the jury announces their decision to find Eirik guilty only on the charge of gross corruption and not guilty of any drug trafficking case, which would significantly reduce his prison sentence. However, this relief does not last long, as the bench of judges, who mostly approve of the jury’s decision in usual cases, now overturns the decision, finding Eirik Jensen “obviously guilty” of both the charges and presiding over a new trial to be held with different judges. Another narrative gradually crept up, but it was never put to any court test, and it remains among those in support of Eirik. It seems almost impossible that the police officer had been involved in such a huge scandal for so long without its knowledge with any of his higher officials. Gradually, a belief seeps into the minds of many that Eirik Jensen was solitarily being framed and blamed for his actions to take the fall for the entire police department, which had been involved in such corruption for quite a long time. Despite such claims, the ex-police officers who provide their judgment in the show maintain that none of them had any idea about Jensen’s actions, and that whatever he did was his own doing.
‘Mr. Good: Cop Or Crook’ Ending Explained—What Happens At The Final Trial? Where Is Eirik Jensen Now?
Finally, in June of 2020, the case was put up for its final trial in the Supreme Court of Norway, and Eirik and Ragna still remained hopeful that he would be set free. The bench of judges completely dismisses Eirik’s claim of having maintained professional relations with Cappelen only as an informer, saying that the police officer had reported information he had got from the smuggler only once to his superiors in the entire time that he worked with the man for close to twenty years. The court ruled Eirik Jensen absolutely guilty of both the crimes and gave him a prison sentence of 21 years. The ex-police officer and now convicted drug trafficker is immediately arrested and starts to serve his sentence in 2020.
Eirik Jensen still lives and provides a lot of screen time in “Mr. Good: Cop or Crook?” as he tries to present his side of the story while in captivity at the Kongsvinger prison in Norway. He can apply for parole only in 2034, after serving fourteen years of the prison sentence, and his mother wishes to stay alive to see that day. Ragna remains in a relationship with the man and visits him in prison as frequently as allowed. Eirik and his lawyers had filed an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, but the appeal was dismissed. They now wish to file a motion to reopen the case and put it up for trial once more. In conclusion, despite trying to present both sides, the case and the evidence found indeed seem quite lopsided, as it seems Eirik Jensen is, after all, Mr. Good, the crook who duped the authorities for so long. However, whether higher police and administrative officials knew of his actions is something that remains highly debatable.
“Mr. Good: Cop or Crook?” is a 2022 Crime Investigation Docuseries streaming on Netflix.
