A chronicle of stop and search operations
01 January 2003
Within the last few months, Dutch city councils have introduced new laws giving police powers to arbitrarily stop and search without "reasonable suspicion" (non-suspect related stop and search operations). In law enforcement terminology this is called "preventative policing", in practice, it is the criminalisation of poor and black neighbourhoods, in this case particularly Moroccan youth.
As part of the debate around the "powerlessness" of the Dutch police the authorities, backed by the Dutch Parliament, have changed the law to make non-suspect related stop and search operations possible. The Law on Weapons and Ammunition and the Council law were amended on 15 September 2002, allowing police to check people and vehicles in zones that are declared "security risk areas". Police can search these areas for up to twelve hours. If they want to carry out daily search operations they have to get permission on a daily basis. The Council law changes give the city councils powers to delegate to the mayor the right to declare certain areas "security risk areas".
The changes to the law to make "preventative" stop and search operations possible started with a police action in the Millinxbuurt in Rotterdam in 2001 (and similar actions in Den Bosch and Eindhoven). There the police closed off a neighbourhood and conducted searches of people on the street. Although they found five weapons, the reaction from the public was furious. J Naeyé, a criminal law professor, said that they constituted a violation of human rights and the court also ruled that the police actions were unlawful. The Minister of Justice responded by amending the law.
In the first weeks after the legal changes, the police announced beforehand in which streets stop and search operations would take place. The police considered this to be inefficient and within a month the Rotterdam police force changed its strategy. While the new law has little to say on questions of operations, it does specify that the identification of a "security risk area" has to be approved by the council. The zones can be in place three months (in Rotterdam, for example) or for six months (Amsterdam), and during this period, the public prosecutor decides where the 12-hour stop and search operations can take place. This limited oversight at least prevents arbitrary operations everywhere.
Most cities, and even villages, have been implementing the new laws in their Algemene Plaatselijke Politieverordeningen (APV, general local police regulation). The "security risk areas" that have been identified so far are mainly in town centres where at the weekend people tend to go out partying. In Amsterdam and Rotterdam, areas with migrant communities have been assigned as security risk areas. The neighbourhood in Rotterdam is impoverished, with half of the houses empty and shuttered.
On 25 August 2002, Roermond decided to make preventative search operations legal, which meant its city council prefigured the national law passed by the Dutch Parliament on 15 September. The first city to introduce the new police powers was Den Helder, where search operations started on 20 September 2002. After three months the mayor announced that the stops and searches were unnecessary. The reasons for his decision are unclear.
Rotterdam was one of the first cities to change its Algemene Plaatselijke Politieverordening to make preventative stop and search operations possible. Here the Tarwewijk was pronounced a security risk area for three months, allowing the police to stop and search people for a twelve hour period every day over three months. Local police and judiciary now want to extend the area in which the operations take place. In an evaluation, the police claim that the operation has been, in general, positive. The chief of police claimed that the operations are successful and rejected claims that they were racist, as critics had argued. He claimed that police were stopping a wide range of people and if the<