Report filed against police and state after officer kills family with service weapon

After a police officer murdered his wife and two daughters before committing suicide in 2019, a report has now been filed against the police and state, the family’s lawyer Ruth Jager confirmed after reports by the Volkskrant on Saturday.

The lawsuit was filed by the mother-in-law of the police officer who believed the killings were a case of culpable homicide. She accused the police of negligence for providing the officer with his service weapon. “That should never have been possible,” Jager said Saturday.

The National Criminal Investigation Department should have investigated if police officers are stable enough to use their service weapons, but the matter was passed on the Justice and Security Inspectorate. The inspectorate refused to conduct the investigation because it was not part of their “primary tasks”, according to the Volkskrant.

“The investigation still needs to happen. Thus, we filed a report," Jager said.

A police spokesperson said to the Volkskrant there are guidelines in place for when the service weapon of an officer will be confiscated. “We want to avoid protocolizing too much. According to the corps psychologist, weapons are often taken too quickly because supervisors believe there is something wrong with the colleague,” the spokesperson said.

In previous investigations, it was stated that the man commited the murders due to relationship problems. He entered a police station in September 2019 “unkempt and in bathroom slippers” to pick up his service weapon. A colleague questioned whether he was even an officer but did not sound the alarm. Once at home, the officer shot his wife and two daughters, aged eight and twelve.