In November 2014 Eliasson was appointed the new head of the
Swedish Police Authority and he took up the position on 1 January 2015 while the authority was in the middle of a major restructuring. His appointment was criticized by the police union on the grounds that Eliasson is not a
police officer and had no experience of policing. In September 2015, during the ongoing
European migration crisis, Eliasson, being the chief of police, blocked attempts by Swedish regional police and customs authorities to erect
border controls. Consequently, the
cabinet ministers received no request from the police to organise border checks. The controls were ordered in November 2016 by the cabinet. Later, it emerged that the killer was not under 18 and possibly not even a teenager, but had lied about his age in order to receive favourable treatment when claiming asylum. In June 2016 Eliasson led a campaign to hand out
armbands saying "don't grope" to curb groping and sexual assaults, like those at the 2014 and 2015
We Are Sthlm sexual assaults. The armbands were criticised as being ineffectual and they
laid the responsibility for stopping the assaults on the victims instead of the perpetrators. According to police reports commented upon by Eliasson in June 2015,
high crime rate areas numbered 15 in 2015 and 23 in 2017. In October 2017 Eliasson was interviewed by
SR Ekot where he was queried about his promise in May 2015 to regain control in
areas of Sweden with high crime rates. Instead of regaining control, he admitted that the number of such areas had increased. He stated that two years earlier he had not predicted police resources would be saturated by
migration,
gang shootings,
serious crime and
terrorism to the degree that was the case. His tenure as head of police ended on 15 February 2018 and he was replaced by
Anders Thornberg. == Head of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency ==