Police chief lied about destruction of small arms
01 January 2003
The Minister of Justice, Ms Lene Espersen (conservative), has admitted that the leadership of the national police force lied in a report to the United Nations (UN), giving the impression that outdated police guns had been destroyed and not sold on to the private international gun market. Since 1998 10,000 old Walther 7.65 mm calibre guns - popularised in the James Bond movies - have been replaced with new 9 mm weapons from the German arms producer Heckler & Koch. Part of the deal with the producer was that the old guns would be bought by the company with the purpose of selling them on the open weapons market. Evidence has come to light revealing that some of these guns are being sold over the internet by an American arms dealer and by the Witham company in Colsterworth in UK.
There are a vast amount of small arms circulating in civil society. Increases in violent crime are blamed on easy access to small arms, which often escalate conflicts and confrontations. The UN General Assembly has adopted several resolutions calling on the authorities of the member states to make moves to limit the illicit circulation of small arms. It is especially mentioned in a resolution from 1997:
All States should exercise restraint with respect to the transfer of the surplus of small arms and light weapons manufactured solely for.. use by the military and police forces. All States should.. consider the possibility of destroying all such surplus weapons (The term "surplus" indicates serviceable and unserviceable small arms and light weapons held in stockpiles by military and police forces and the illicit weapons seized by such forces that they no longer need).
The Danish Foreign Office participated in the negotiation of these resolutions and Denmark voted in favour of them, both in 1997 and 1998.
An official police evaluation into the need to replace their old guns, which were first issued to them in 1948, involved arms specialists, ballistic experts and army personnel. The final report by the Ministry of Justice (then led by the now former Minister, Frank Jensen, social democrat) on 11 April 1997, authorised the national police force to go ahead with the deal. The price was 24 million Danish kroner and the counter sale of the old weapons was 7 million kroner, which saved the police budget a considerable amount of money. At no time during the deal did the police inquire of the Foreign Office if it would be violating official small arms policy. The police said that the deal would not be violating the resolutions and that if people wanted guns and"did not have the possibility to buy the police weapons they would, all things considered, buy other weapons".
In March 2001, as part of the UN's follow-up procedure, the General Secretary's office invited member states to "communicate the relevant information" about national measures to "destroy surplus, confiscated or collected small arms and light weapons". In their response the police claimed: "All small arms and light weapons of the police forces which have been taken out of service are destroyed centrally through melting or shredding". This, the Minister of Justice in an answer to Line Barfod MP (Red-Green Alliance) has now admitted, was a lie. She will now inform the UN about the correct state of affairs regarding Danish weapons policy.
NETHERLANDS
A chronicle of stop and search operations
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 L