Almost a quarter of police stations closed in the past five years

Almost a quarter of police stations in the Netherlands closed their doors in the past five years, EenVandaag reported based on figures from the National Police. In 2019, the country counted 293 “team stations” where people could go 24/7 to report a crime, for example. Now, there are 227.

The number of police stations decreased in all regional police units, but the most in the Rotterdam region. There, 16 of the 38 stations have disappeared since 2019. The Noord-Nederland region, which includes Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe, lost over a third of its total police stations.

The Friesland town of Wolvega currently has one police station, which will close next year. Mayor André van Nadort called it “a very bad thing” that citizens will soon have to go to Heerenveen to file a report physically. “You see that the police are disappearing from the cities, but especially from the villages and neighborhoods,” he told EenVandaag. “And for trust in the police, it is very important that officers are visible in the neighborhood. You simply see less police.”

Van Nadort also called it crucial for cops to have a bond with the neighborhood they work in. “Because we still have our own station, neighborhood police officers still start their shifts there. This is the place where they work from; from here, they go into the neighborhood.” He worries that the bond officers have with locals will disappear when they start working from Heerenveen.

The Schoof I Cabinet’s government agreement states that the new government will focus heavily on increasing the visibility of police officers on the street. The Cabinet wants to open more police stations in places like town halls and libraries, though these counters will only be open to a limited extent, and citizens will typically only be able to visit by appointment.

Pieter van Vollenhoven, the former chairman of the Dutch Safety Board who conducted extensive research into the police reorganization almost 12 years ago, blames the decrease in police stations on the formation of the National Police. Closing police stations was a deliberate part of the reorganization, he told EenVandaag. “Without any substantiation, it was determined that so much money could be saved,” he said. “But that wasn’t based on anything and those cuts were simply continued.”

The National Police told the program that police stations exist to support police work. “And that work has become less and less dependent on a physical office,” a spokesperson said. “Where colleagues used to have to return to the station for all kinds of actions, they can now do their work almost everywhere with digital tools. Keeping stations open also costs time and money, and we have to handle both carefully.”