October 25, 2008

Man harassed by police for 13 years after identity theft

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:39 am

A Dutchman of Surinamese decent has been fighting the police, customs and the DoJ for the past thirteen years after a criminal junkie kept pretending to be him, says the national ombudsman. The anonymous man has a criminal record of 43 crimes, none of which he committed. Although the police knew almost from the start that a criminal junkie kept using the man’s identity, they never succeeded in entirely clearing his name. Instead, the treatment the victim received over the years at the hands of the police and customs got worse and worse. Among other things the man was arrested for reading a newspaper and his house was searched in the presence of his two young children.

When the man asked the police what they were going to do to clear his name, he bluntly got told to change his identity.

The ombudsman concludes:

“Kafka'” and “Kafka-esque” are terms in danger of becoming over-used when describing government actions, but in this case the label is entirely deserved.

The government will introduce a law next year that should miraculously help minimize mix-ups such as these by limiting civil freedoms even further and by increasing the number of points of failure, though the ombudsman seems quite happy with (part of) the proposal.

(Edit 22-5-2018: replaced link to Ombudsman press release by link to Ombudsman news article)

Tags: , , ,

October 3, 2008

Students give back 300 traffic signs

Filed under: Gadgets by Branko Collin @ 8:04 am

No student house is complete without a traffic sign lifted without permission during a drunken late-night ramble. Or so I have heard.The Groningen police seem to think that traffic signs belong on the street (not everyone in the North agrees with them) and started a campaign to get the signs back. The result: 300 traffic signs were returned by “students and other citizens,” and 23 shopping carts to boot.

The campaign is now over, and the police say that they will hold checks in the near future based on tips and their own information, and will fine the owners of any traffic signs they might unearth. It’s not clear from the article how they will do that without search warrants.

Photo: Politie Groningen.

Tags: , , , ,

September 24, 2008

The police and the artwork

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 8:32 am

When guerrilla art becomes official, we need to look to officials for guerrilla art.

Some 250,000 coloured euro cents, weighing 670 kilos, and worth 2,500 euro formed the minted graffiti of Stefan Sagmeister as part of Experimenta Design 2008 in Amsterdam. According to the artist:

After the piece is completely set up we will leave it alone, on the street. We expect the piece to slowly dissolve as people take coins, play with them, alter the design.

This happened sooner than expected. Not everybody was in on the artist’s idea of slow disintegration, and when a neighbour saw somebody with a large bag sampling the artwork, they called the police. The police tried and failed to contact the owner, and then decided to help out further by, er, interacting with the artwork themselves, cleaning the entire square. Somehow the artist, who got his coins back in what can only be described as body bags for art works, hadn’t seen that one coming.

Volunteers had worked for 8 days to spell out the text “Obsessions make my life worse and my work better” in painted cents.

“Vandalism or street art?” asks Bright about the piece. “Police destroys art work,” headlines Francisco van Jole. “Money the police sure can use,” muses Trendbeheer. Anyway, still plenty photos and even videos exist. Amongst them this rather artful one by Anjens, some rights reserved and titled CSI Amsterdam.

Tags: , , ,

February 28, 2008

Hiding child pornogaphy instead of stopping it

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am
cds1.jpg

According to Dutch columnist and publicist Karin Spaink, the KLPD (National Police Services Agency) have a list of Dutch child pornography sites in their possession and are not really doing anything to shut these sites down. Instead, they point to Dutch ISPs saying that they should filter these sites. That still doesn’t sound like shutting the sites down.

Although the list was secret, Spaink managed to find out that four Dutch websites were on the list, with hosters in Utrecht and Haarlem. After looking at the sites, the KLPD agreed that at least two of the sites clearly hosted child pornography, while the other two are still being investigated. According to spokesman Ed Kraszewski of the KLPD, their list only had foreign sites – before Spaink got a hold of their list.

Here is a list, readily available online, taken from the Finnish police. You just need to scan to see all those Dutch sites.

England, the US and the Netherlands. What was the argument for filtering these sites again? “The sites can’t be shut down by the police because they are often in countries with no legislation for this kind of thing.” (Taken from Webwereld, 23 maart 2007). Since when is Haarlem and Utrecht somewhere in Russia or Eastern Europe?

Just filtering sites is not enough. And UPC, the only Dutch ISP that actually bothers to filter child pornography sites, has a filter that doesn’t work, if we can believe the many comments left by UPC clients on Spaink’s blog who found out first hand what kiddie porno really looks like.

(Link Karin Spaink’s blog)

Tags: , ,

February 20, 2008

The soothing smell of oranges

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink,Science by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am
Oranges

The scent of oranges is being used in an experiment to create a calm atmosphere at Rotterdam’s main police station, reports news agency ANP. The tests, begun in January, aim to establish if workers find the atmosphere improved and prisoners are less aggressive, ANP reports the force’s in-house magazine as saying. Initial results show the orange scent is having a calming affect in the cells and that demand for sedatives is down, ANP says. The experiment is now being extended for a further six months.

(Link: dutchnews.nl)

Tags: , ,

February 11, 2008

Utrecht police get served paper pizza

Filed under: Gadgets by Orangemaster @ 11:16 am
politiepizza

The police in Utrecht are kicking off a fitness campaign called ‘Zorg goed voor jezelf’ (‘Take good care of yourself’). The cops will be given a pizza box, albeit not with pizza inside. The box features a paper pizza that are vouchers for various fitness-related clinics, such as quit smoking, learning about healthy food, and hydrospinning and nordic walking.

The pizza box is a hint to eating healthier and is meant to get the police to think about their lifestyle. The Netherlands doesn’t have doughnuts shops like they do in North America by the way.

I don’t understand why the box has to have an English motto and why it doesn’t really make any sense.

(Link and image: vleesmagazine.nl)

Tags: , , ,

January 21, 2008

Escaped Highlander shot dead for causing danger

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 4:08 pm
highland_cow.jpg
Photo: Highland cow in Hilversum, by Gerard M., distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.2.

Last Saturday, a Highland cow was shot (Dutch) near Den Velde in the province of Overijssel for causing dangerous situations on the road. The cow had escaped three weeks before from near Reeze and had reportedly caused a lot of trouble in the neighbourhood already. Highland cows are often used in the Netherlands for grazing nature reserves. They are hardy beasts that require little supervision, and eat more than just grass. The Highlander was caught when it tried to make a run for Germany.

This is not the first time that the police treat nature like a problem. Last Wednesday, our modern day knights who say “ni” shot a cow (Dutch) that had escape with its calf. The orphaned calf is still on the run. And in the summer of 2007, a fox “had to be” shot for accepting food from photographers.

Tags: , , ,

November 16, 2007

Boy arrested for “stealing” virtual furniture

Filed under: Dutch first,Online by Branko Collin @ 1:00 am

The police in Amsterdam have arrested a 17-year-old boy at an undisclosed date for removing virtual furniture from other people’s accounts in the virtual community Habbo Hotel. According to the police of Amsterdam-Amstelland (Dutch) the suspect hails from Breda. Four more suspects, all 15 years old and from Gennep, have been questioned. The police are charging the five with computer trespass, theft, destruction of data and buying stolen properties, although the article sums up the case as one of fraud. This is the first time people have been arrested in the Netherlands for stealing virtual goods. The police received reports from five victims.

Habbo Hotel is a commercial online community for teens. Members can go to chatrooms and buy furniture, called “furni” according to Wikipedia. The furniture can then be placed in so-called guest rooms, or traded with other members.

(Link: ananova.com)

Tags: , , ,

September 23, 2007

Police officer forces brutality witness to delete movie

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:38 pm

A man from Deventer has filed a complaint against a police officer who forced him to delete video footage of a violent arrest, according to De Stentor. The policeman had just arrested another man for being drunk and disorderly. When his prisoner tried to escape though, the policeman started beating and kicking him, according to the witness.

The local chief of police, Lute Nieuwerth, tried to add oil to the flames when talking to De Stentor by coming up with some of the regular fallacies; blame the victim, sometimes excessive force is not excessive, yada, yada, yada.

The 19-year-old victim of the beating has not filed a complaint.

Tags: ,