September 24, 2012

Dutch police hold on to tall wooden penis a little longer (NSFW)

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 12:00 pm

A two-metre-tall wooden penis was found to be insulting by a judge in Breda last Wednesday. Artist Peter de Koning of Steenbergen in Noord Brabant had made the statue to protest the way a police officer had treated his daughter. The officer had allegedly groped the girl from his car under the pretext of searching for marijuana late last year.

A note attached to the statue read “Protest statue, Nico van den Wijngaard, Steenbergen police”. Insulting the police is illegal in the Netherlands.

The court has sentenced De Koning to a suspended fine of 1,000 euro and also declared that the statue should be returned to its maker, BN De Stem reports. The police have yet to comply with that part of the verdict, according to Algemeen Dagblad.

In the meantime Van den Wijngaard has been transferred to a different patrol territory, for the second time in two years.

(Photo by Alan Woo, some rights reserved. Video: YouTube / Omroep Brabant)

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September 8, 2012

Cops with debts may be fired

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:45 pm

Being in debt is a valid reason to be fired as a police officer, a court has ruled.

The Centrale Raad van Beroep, an appeals court for civil servants, came to this conclusion in the case of a police man with ‘many debts’, as NOS Nieuws puts it. He had been reprimanded in 2005, and when that did not work he was fired in 2009.

The court argued that officers with access to all kinds of databases open themselves up to blackmail, which makes them a greater security risk. Police officers are therefore expected to live up to higher standards.

In the Netherlands jobs are protected. You can only fire an employee through the courts, unless there is a strong reason for immediate dismissal.

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July 2, 2012

Wild police chase using a tractor

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 8:45 am

Police officers had to resort to requisitioning a tractor to catch three suspected bicycle thieves in a field last Thursday, the Breukelen police report.

Earlier that evening a citizen saw the three suspects loading bicycles into a van and alerted 112 (the European emergency phone number). A motorcycle cop spotted the van and signalled the driver to stop, but the van continued onto the A2 motorway in the direction of Amsterdam. During the chase, the van stopped on the shoulder and three men emerged, fleeing into a meadow.

Several officers ran after the suspects, and at that point one of the officers requisitioned a tractor with which he or she continued the chase. With the help of wardens of a nearby nature reserve who were passing in a boat, the officers managed to stop and arrest the suspects on top of a dike.

The suspects turned out to be from Haarlem and were aged 29, 37 and 43. The van had a stolen license plate.

You read it here first, folks: three men from Harlem arrested in Brooklyn using a tractor.

(Photo of a dike in Kockengen, near where we suspect the three were apprehended, by E. Dronkert, some rights reserved)

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June 13, 2012

A day in the life of a folding bike

Filed under: Bicycles,Film by Branko Collin @ 11:03 am

When young people go out and enjoy themselves in horror movies, you know things are going to go wrong. Same thing goes for when a Dutch man doesn’t lock his bicycle…

This 2009 short called Vouwfiets Vaterland was made by Marten van Warmerdam and Wouter Zaalberg, and follows a day in the life of a folding bike.

The 7:25 minute long movie was shot for the Nederlands Online Film Festival. ‘Vouwfiets’ is Dutch for folding bicycle, and Vaterland is a bicycle brand.

(Video: YouTube/NFF. Link: Rona Justine)

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April 11, 2012

Stolen Greek icons found on Dutch website

Filed under: Art,Religion,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:33 pm

The Greek authorities discovered icons stolen from a church in Greece in 2009 on the website of a Dutch art dealer who claims he didn’t know they were stolen.

The seven Greek icons, with values ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 euro, were seized by the police in April last year, placed in the Rijksmuseum for safe keeping, and handed over to the Greek Ministry of Culture on December 5, 2011. They date from the 18th and 19th centuries and play an important part in the country’s cultural and historical heritage.

The police explain that works of art are usually sold many years after they have been stolen, and so this discrepancy probably makes it sound like the dealer could be telling the truth. I’ve been told there are international sites to check and see if works or art have been stolen and then I would imagine that the dealer was not very knowledgeable in icons or is not telling the truth.

Even Wikipedia has a page of stolen works of art, with a few Dutch ones as well.

(Link: Trouw.nl, photo: politie.nl)

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April 4, 2012

Dutch authorities make identity theft easy

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:19 pm

As of late, many journalists have turned finding out how badly privacy is protected by government institutions into a kind of sport.

Reinier Vermeer, a journalist from Webwereld, rang up the Employee Insurance Agency (UWV) to find out about the data they had on him, and a few days later he got a letter from them with all the details of his neighbours.

The letter contained the complete names, dates of birth and social insurance numbers of his next-door neighbours, all of which is enough to ask for an online ID code, for doing taxes and even request a new passport using your own picture. It’s like Christmas for identity thieves and it goes against everything the Data Protection Law stands for.

And if said journalist was a real baddie, he could run around for a long time posing as his neighbour and commit all kinds of atrocities. The police in the journalist’s area are currently trying out a system where if you lose your passport, you don’t need to file a report with the police anymore, you just show up at some municipal office and file for a new passport. And unless his neighbour recently ordered a new biometric passport, there is no way of checking whether the journalist is who he says he is. And imagine the neighbour’s fun of trying to prove he is who he is.

So you’re a a hardcore baddie (think terrorist), you have a proper though technically illegal European passport, and the Dutch authorities would probably investigate the neighbour’s claim of having had his identity stolen for months before you’d get caught for anything, all because some stupid employee at the Employee Insurance Agency is too stupid/lazy/unmotivated to follow the rules or even learn them.

See also: Man harassed by police for 13 years after identity theft

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March 16, 2012

Cops fine pregnant woman having a miscarriage

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:00 am

A 21-year-old pregnant woman trying to avoid a little girl tripped out of a bus in Groningen and fell flat on her stomach. An ambulance was called to bring her to the hospital. She was in pain, and realised that she was losing her unborn child. The police showed up and asked her for ID, which she wasn’t carrying at the time, something that is required by law at all times. She gave her details to the police, but they decided to fine her for not having any ID. She yelled at the police in pain, waiting for the ambulance. “If I could have stood up, I would have kicked them”, the woman said.

The police didn’t even wait for the ambulance and left. The panic was probably even greater, since this was apparently her second miscarriage. The police didn’t confirm the story, saying they don’t check who they hand out fines to (huh?) and the woman has lawyered up.

I’m wondering if there’s any CCTV footage or witnesses to corroborate the story, and if this is true, my general opinion of the police is not getting any better.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Illustration by Leonardo da Vinci)

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November 15, 2011

Dial 114 when the neighbour kicks his cat

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 12:15 pm

The Dutch emergency number is 112, but thanks to a political party that has more in common with animals than people who don’t look Dutch, they’ve set up the emergency number 114 144, opening today, to report animal-related accidents, abuse and neglect. Calling 114 144 will send specially trained cops over to that puppy farm that sells cute puppies illegally ‘imported’ from Albania and what have you.

If you read the information from 114 Red een dier (114 Save an animal), the site tells you to dial 144, which has to be a mistake is confusing to say the least.

Of course, it sounds like a great idea, just like training ‘animal cops’ to catch people who mistreat animals and hand down tougher sentences against people who abuse animals. It remains ironic that although the current government promised 3,000 additional regular cops on the streets to handle crime, it welched on that and managed to scrounge up 500 animal cops to appease their ‘silent’ coalition partner, the one that likes furry animals and dislikes humans of the non-Dutch persuasion.

Just remember, a few years ago the Dutch finally outlawed sex with animals, but before that was a top distributor of animal porn worldwide.

Some animals are more equal than others. Just like people.

UPDATE: According to newspaper De Volkskrant, the animal emergency number is 144, but it used to be 114. Nobody knows why and the government hasn’t provided an answer yet. What a mess.

MORE UPDATE: According to nu.nl news site, it was controversial member of Parliament Dion Graus, also of the not so non Dutch friendly political party who personally reserved the domain name ‘114redeendier.nl’. He was planning to push his animal friendly ideas through for a long time, and his day came. The irony of him having been accused of beating his ex wife and making threats against his ex stepfather (justice dropped it for lack of evidence), but wanting to defend animals makes him quite the colourful politician.

(Link: www.rnw.nl)

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September 16, 2011

Man arrested after trying to pay for pizza using stolen coupons

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Branko Collin @ 10:02 pm

A 22-year-old man from The Hague was arrested today at a pizza place on the Laan van Meerdervoort when he tried to pay with stolen coupons.

The owner called the cops because the coupons had not been published yet. In fact, they had just been printed, and had been stolen earlier that same day from a car in the Torenstraat.

While in gaol, the suspect will have plenty of time to listen to André van Duin’s song Pizza: “Wait a bit … a little longer … a little longer … even longer … pizza!”

(Link: Police Haaglanden region. Photo by Uggboy, some rights reserved)

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August 17, 2011

Shooting incidents involving cops almost doubles

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 7:12 pm

The National Police Internal Investigations Department (Rijksrecherche) reports that incidents in which police officers injured or killed people using guns have increased from 14 in 2006 to 25 in 2010, Telegraaf reported last Thursday.

According to the department all uses were justified. Shooting incidents, the paper reports, formed the largest category of investigations, followed by investigations into corruption.

Dutch ‘beat cops’ are armed with handcuffs, a Walther P5, and “pepper spray, a truncheon, a walkie-talkie, a mobile phone and a ticket pad”, politie.nl lists meticulously. The site adds that all these items are worn on a belt. NOS Nieuws reported last January that police union NPB was surprised about not having been consulted about the new side-arm, the SIG Sauer, especially considering that the weapons testers chose another gun.

(Photo by Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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