The Amsterdam Herald

Review of racial profiling in The Hague follows claims of police brutality and discrimination

Photo by Bas Bogers

An inquiry has begun into racial profiling by police in The Hague, a practice condemned as discriminatory by Amnesty International.

A report by the human rights organisation found that preventive actions such as stop and search and identity checks were often guided by prejudice rather than reasonable grounds for suspicion.

Last week three former officers told Omroep West that racism and intimidation were prevalent among police in the Schilderswijk, a district with a large migrant population and a reputation as a high crime area.

 

Henk van Essen, the former head of The Hague’s police division, revealed that two studies had been commissioned into how police officers carry out their duties on the beat.

Van Essen denied there was a systemic problem of racism in the police service, but acknowledged that profiling on the basis of ethnicity was unprofessional and the force needed to learn from individual incidents.

He said officers should be more prepared to explain their actions when dealing with the public. For example, officers would be justified in stopping two black youths walking around with a sports bag if it was in an area with a high rate of burglaries.

The police station on De Heemstraat, in the Schilderswijk area of The Hague, has been the focus of numerous allegations of police brutality and discrimination against ethnic minorities.

Three former officers, one of whom spent three years at De Heemstraat, told Omroep West anonymously that disproportionate violence was meted out to suspects from minority communities.

One of them said: “A suspect who was sitting on the back seat and got lippy paid for it with punches.”

The officer’s report on the incident said the suspect had resisted arrest. “Everyone knew that wasn’t the case, but there was no dissent,” said the whistleblower.

A retired officer who spent 17 years with the force and now lives in the Schilderswijk said he had witnessed a youth of Moroccan origin being attacked by eight of his colleagues.

“I said something about it, but none of my colleagues was willing to acknowledge it,” he said. Another officer said: “You have to comply, you never rat on your colleagues, or else you have to leave.”

In response to the allegations police produced their own statistics which showed that officers used force against suspects on 663 occasions in 2012.

Internal investigations found that on 19 occasions – three per cent of the total – officers had been too quick to resort to physical means. The figures were not broken down by ethnicity or background of the suspects.

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Source: Omroep West: Onderzoek naar discriminatie bij Haagse politie

See also: Amnesty International Netherlands website (in Dutch)