The Dutch police are good at keeping the peace. Too good perhaps. It’s time they got a little tougher, writes De Pers, and police authorities agree.

A group of radical Muslims walks into debating centre De Balie and threatens the Canadian author Irshad Manji and MP Tofik Dibi. What do the police do? They ask the two to step down from the stage.
Dozens of Turkish youths meet at the Museumplein and start marching in the direction of a Kurdish centre. The police do nothing and at the centre a riot erupts.
At Feyenoord football stadium police are confronting a group of hooligans, guns at the ready. The ME arrives and prevents things from escalating. But why are they so late?, asks De Pers. Because the police was trying to stay out of sight in order not to aggravate the hooligans.
Pushovers
All the above are examples of ‘police friendliness’, De Pers writes and it is not meant as a compliment. The rightwing wind that has been blowing in the Netherlands with its zero tolerance on crime seems to have passed the police force by and the police mantra ‘de-escalate, de-escalate, de-escalate’ has turned the force into an ineffectual bunch of week kneed pushovers, the paper suggests.
A quarter of police officers does not act in situations where action is required, according to a recent police academy report. They don’t feel supported when they do and training to cope with potentially dangerous situations is far from adequate.
Negative
A police sociologist is quoted as saying that a police officer who has used force one or twice in one week can probably count on a negative response instead of being complimented for having acted when the need arose.
Did the police give in to the rioters in De Balie? Amsterdam mayor Eberhard van der Laan says no. ‘The police were creating space and then went after the radical Muslims’, he commented.
Cor de Lange, police chief in Groningen, agrees that much depends on the situation but he is certain that police in the main wait too long to act. ‘When it’s eleven o’clock on a Friday night you reason with people but at four in the morning we were still reasoning with them. By that time people are drunk and you need to do something.’
Backlash
Next year the police academy is starting a programme to make police trainees mentally and physically stronger. ‘It’s a question of finding the right balance’, says De Lange. He explains that the mentality of postponing the use of force for as long as possible has deep roots in the police force and is a result of a backlash against police brutality during the eighties. ‘But we shouldn’t swing too far in the opposite direction side either. We’re not going to go the American way with policemen using pepper spray. But we are heading the call for tougher policing.’
De Pers is not convinced and cites the workshop titles of an upcoming police training seminar: ‘Empathy and maintaining order: remaining in contact while taking action’, and ‘Resolving conflicts between police and citizens: mending relationships post-conflict.