Police are to carry out research to find out if Poles, Bulgarians and Romanians are turning to petty crime and risk being over-represented in the crime figures, news agency ANP reports on Wednesday.

‘We want to find out how criminality is developing within this group and who they are,’ a spokesman for the national police chiefs’ association said.
For example, the research will investigate whether people who become embroiled in crime in the Netherlands did so because they lost their jobs or because they are members of criminal gangs.
The police chiefs were responding to claims in the AD that police and council officials in the big Dutch cities have noticed a sharp rise in crime committed by people from central and eastern Europe. The paper did not give any figures on its website.
The Hague’s police chief Henk van Essen focused on the problem in his New Year speech and blamed the economic crisis, the paper said.
Unemployment
‘Many people from central and eastern Europe have lost their jobs. We used to see them in public nuisance reports but they are now showing up in the crime figures. They lose their jobs and start to steal,’ Van Essen is quoted as saying. He says the rise in home break-ins in The Hague is partly due to eastern Europeans.
Rotterdam police have also decided to come down harder on eastern European suspects, the AD states.
‘Their share of car theft and break-ins is increasing. We are now more alert in areas where they cause the most nuisance,’ spokeswoman Marjan den Hollander is quoted as saying.