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Netherlands: Dutch police trigger-happy?

01 November 1996

An extensive investigation led by Professor Jan Naeyé from the Amsterdam Free University which was published last October shows that Dutch police shoot more frequently than their German colleagues. Professor Naeyé's team researched 3,360 incidents involving the use of police firearms between 1978-1995. During this period, 53 people were killed and 244 wounded, with involuntary discharges accounting for nearly 20% of the killings. Figures on shooting incidents in Nordrheinland-Westfalen, a comparable region in Germany, show that over the period 1992-1995 nearly twice as many people were injured in Holland as in Germany. Half of the incidents involved shooting at a fleeing car in spite of clear instructions issued in 1988 not to shoot at driving cars because of the risks to bystanders. Dutch police officers shoot at cars ten times as often as in the German example. The researchers advise improved and intensified training procedures to reduce the number of incidents: they point to the fact that the specially-drilled "arrest teams", deployed exclusively in dangerous arrest situations, have not experienced a single involuntary discharge since 1990. Although these teams arrested some five thousand suspects, they hardly needed to fire a single shot. Also, the researchers advise against allowing police personnel to take their pistol home after duty. During the investigated period, twenty-five persons were killed or injured by police bullets while the officer involved was not on active duty and kept his weapon at home. Naeye criticised the police unions for having been "not too precise on the truth" when pleading for the introduction of a new type of bullet with higher stopping power. His research showed that in 90% of the cases, people hit by the "Action 3" police bullets presently in use stopped their attack or flight. A police union leader reacted to the reproaches by calling it "a stupid remark".