Police officers were wrong to create a traffic jam on the A2 in October last year in order to catch a petrol thief, the public prosecution department in Utrecht said on Wednesday.

A 35-year-old man from Maastricht was killed when the suspect’s car rammed into his after police forced traffic to a standstill.
However, the police officers who created the jam will not face charges because there are no laws covering this sort of action and they were simply following orders, the prosecutor said in a statement. Nevertheless, road safety should have been given higher priority than catching a petrol thief, the statement said.
Police chiefs have now said that traffic jam creation should not be used to stop suspects until national guidelines have been established.
The practice of causing traffic jams has come in for considerable criticism. Guido van Woerkom, director of motoring organisation ANWB said at the time: ‘People who knew nothing [about the incident] were involved and one person was killed – all for a couple of litres of petrol.’