Police dropped the ball in murdered nurse case: VVD, D66

By Janene Pieters on August 13, 2015 - 09:39
Linda_van_der_Giesen_(Facebook)
Linda van der Giesen (Photo: Facebook). (Linda van der Giesen (Photo: Facebook))

The VVD and D66 feel that the police made a grave mistake in the case surrounding nurse Linda van der Giesen, who was murdered at the Tweesteden hospital in Waalwijk on Monday.

The woman had reported threats made by her ex-boyfriend several times and reported that her ex had a firearm, but the police did not do anything about it. On Wednesday the police admitted that errors of judgement were made and said that they regret it very much. According to Gerrit van de Kamp, chairman of police union ACP, the important thing now is to find out how it happened. "Who took the report, but also why the information was not automatically connected. That's important to find out in order to prevent similar events in the future", he said according to BNR.

D66 Parliamentarian Magda Berndsen pointed out that this is not the first case in which grave mistakes were made, referring to the murder case of former Minister Els Borst, the Telegraaf reports. Several errors were made in that case, including the failure to take a DNA sample from suspect Bart van U. in a previous arrest that could have led to him being identified as a suspect much earlier than he was. Berndsen wants to know from Minister Ard van der Steur if these errors are due to a capacity shortage in the police.

VVD MP Ockje Tellegen thinks that the police has "dropped the ball in a rough sense", according to the newspaper. She believes that the perpetrator deserves the "harshest punishment possible".

Minister Van der Steur admitted that there "certainly" is a police shortage. "The demand for police deployment seems infinite, but it has its limits. Whether that played a role here, I can not say. But the full width of the matter is that there is about 30 to 40 percent more work than there are actually people." the Minister said to BNR. The police are investigating the tragic incident. "The police receive thousands of similar reports and that makes it very difficult to estimate which cases should be taken seriously and intervened in immediately.:

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