Pokemon Go-stop placed in Denmarks largest cannabis market

Pusher Street in the Christiania Free Town in Copenhagen, Denmark has become a so-called Pokéstop where you can catch cute monsters on your smart phone in the extremely popular game Pokémon Go. But you would not be wise to do so, and it might even be dangerous according to a warning from Christiania.

Pokémon Go is this year’s summer craze. It is a mobile app that takes you on a hunt around town to find and catch cute little monsters. The game has attracted both young and old, and it has been praised for dragging the kids away from their computer screens and providing plenty of exercise.

But you should not blindly trust the game to lead you to the right places.

The infamous Pusher Street in Christiania has thus been made a Pokéstop, causing Cristiania to warn children as well as adults.

Christiania has for decades been the center for cannabis-sales in Copenhagen. Dealers will openly sell cannabis in various forms, but the market is illegal and those selling cannabis often wear masks or hoods in order not to be recognized or photographed by police.

“Your actions could easily be misunderstood — and put you in danger. You have to keep in mind that this is a criminalized area,” says Britta Lillesøe from Christiania’s media and communications team.
 
 No Pictures
 She refers to that fact that when you are trying to catch the Pokémon monsters or just checking in at a Pokéstop, you will often hold out your phone pointing it in different directions with the camera on. To people around you, you could easily appear to be taking pictures.

The pushers in Christiania enforce a strict ban; not just on taking pictures, but also on using headphones, talking on your cell phone, or running near Pusher Street.

“You shouldn’t let your kids chase Pokémons around Pusher Street. Some of the characters in the street sometimes react inappropriately and violently,” Britta Lillesøe explains, hoping that the game creators will remove the spots.

“It would be better if the sale of marijuana was legalized, so some people could maybe sell a little fair-trade marijuana and support a village in Nepal for example.”

Pusher Street has a history of reacting quite strongly to people who do not respect their self-imposed ban on photography. A photographer from the Danish news station TV2 was beaten up and stripped of his clothes when he supposedly tried to film the sale of marijuana with a hidden camera. In other cases, photographers and journalists have been threatened with beatings because the pushers fear that pictures from the street can be used as legal evidence against them.

Spots from a Completely Different Game
 The Pokémon Go game was created by the American game company Niantic Labs, which was originally part of Google. But the different spots in the game have not been created by the company.

“The Pokéstops you find in the game have been created by the players of a completely different game — Ingress — also spawned by Niantic Labs,” explains Bo Abrahamsen who has worked on the development of computer games for Press Play and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation among others.

In Ingress, players seek out the same portals, but Ingress and Pokémon Go differ in a few important aspects, which means that the risk of running into trouble is much greater for Pokémon Go players.

“When you play Pokémon Go, you often need to turn around and point your phone in different directions to catch any Pokémons. At the same time, the camera is often activated, and you might therefore very well appear to be taking pictures of your surroundings,” Bo Abrahamsen explains.

“Ingress has a more abstract and complicated game interface, and the game’s target players are therefore somewhat older. These target players will more likely be aware of and understand the risks associated with taking your phone out near Pusher Street,” Bo Abrahamsen believes.
 
 Ingress and Pokémon Go are games combining the real world with computer games — sometimes just by luring the players around the city, and other times by adding a virtual layer on top of reality through your phone’s camera lens.
 
 This type of virtual games is one of the fastest growing branches of the gaming world, so this will hardly be the last time people run into trouble while moving around the city playing mobile games.

The Police: This is Christiania’s Own Problem
 While several police districts have reminded people to stay off private property and pay attention to traffic while playing Pokémon Go, the Copenhagen Police have no intention of getting involved in the issues in Christiania according to Deputy Chief Superintendent Dannie Rise, who heads up the Pusher Street police task force.
 
 “Up to a point, it’s Christiania’s own problem that they’ve accepted that someone has prohibited people from taking pictures, talking on their phone, or using headphones in Pusher Street. It’s up to them to figure out how to handle the fact that everyone else has been bitten by a Pokémon bug.”

“We have good relations with the good part of Christiania, but when they accept Pusher Street’s ban on the use of cell phones, the logical implication has to be that they tell people that they’re not allowed to play Pokémon Go in the area,” Dannie Rise says.

This article was originally published July 28th, by the local Copenhagen newspaper Havnefronten. Niantic Labs was contacted ahead of publication and asked what the company has done to make sure the game does not lead children to dangerous places, but Niantic Labs did not reply before the deadline. If you experience any dangerous situations, you can report it through the company website.

(Ernst Poulsen is a Copenhagen, Denmark based tech-journalist. Since 1997 he has worked for Politiken, Jyllands-Posten, Copenhagen County and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. Presently he works as a freelancer.)