Police force struggles with staff shortage of 1,600
The police force is facing a shortage of 1,641 officers. The dip represents a "low point" and has added pressure to officers, according to WNL.
In January, the police force was already struggling with 1,400 too few officers on staff. This represented around 3 percent of the total 47,000 jobs at the police. Now, the number of open positions has climbed even higher.
The unfilled positions are on the 168 police teams across the Netherlands. The shortage should be corrected in around three years, as the spots are filled by new recruits from the Police Academy, according to WNL. But for now, the workload for police officers has increased and the police force is stretched thin during events like demonstrations.
“We really want to maintain the hiring requirements as they are now,” said Jan Struijs, president of the Dutch police union, to WNL. “You can't just join the police, there are strict requirements for that. This not only has to do with learning capacity, but also with mentality. There is strict selection for that.”
The number of cases the police do not investigate has doubled in recent years, often because of staff shortages. In 2021, the police dropped a total of 62,293, more than half of which were due to understaffing.
