Giving a greater role to private security firms would be a good way of boosting the public’s feelings of safety and increase police visibility, Tjibbe Joustra, the government´s former counter terrorism chief who now chairs the private security firm association, says in Tuesday’s Financieele Dagblad.

In an interview with the Financieele Dagblad, Joustra says the police currently have too many jobs, many of which could easily be handed on to the private sector.
‘Is managing football matches a key task? No,’ Joustra said. ‘There is a lot of capacity to win by handing such jobs to private security firms.’
Joustra also called for private security workers to be given more powers to detain suspected criminals and to be given access to data bases. ‘A security firm official who sees a suspicious car on an industrial estate can’t look up in the data base whether or not there is something possibly going on,’ he said.
The Netherlands has some 53,000 police officers, including those in training, and 32,000 private security workers, Joustra said.