Amsterdam mayor: Errors made in stop-and-frisk planning

The briefing given to police officers about the targeted weapons checks in the Amsterdam-West district contained inaccuracies, which led to errors made during the preventive searches of people in the area. Mayor Femke Halsema wrote about the situation in a letter to the city council on Monday. The trial to relaunch targeted weapons checks, where anyone in a designated area can be stopped and searched, was stopped in mid-November, because of the problems. Among them, were police officers wrongly carrying out preventive searches at a youth center.

The mayor said she was relying on the factual investigation into the searches on November 10 and 11, when the police in the West district conducted searches at several locations outside designated security areas. People in buildings and all occupants of a GVB bus were also searched. Those checks "simply should not have taken place," according to Halsema. The fact that it did happen is due to inaccuracies in the briefing to the officers who took part in the test in West.

For example, the briefing mentioned a few locations that were outside the designated safety areas, including the site where the youth center was located. According to Halsema, this was due to "a human error.” The briefing also mentioned incorrect procedural examples, namely checking everyone in a hospitality establishment. "This logically suggested to the implementers that inspections in buildings accessible to the public, provided that everyone is checked, were among the possibilities.” Halsema emphasized that the in-house inspection is absolutely not in line with what the heads of the municipality, police department, and Public Prosecution Service had in mind during the test.

"In addition, the assumption was wrongly made during the implementation that the checks should mainly be aimed at young people. This is also included, for example, in a flyer that was distributed to the neighborhood teams," Halsema said. The Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), which was an observer as an external party during the test, also concluded that young people between the ages of 25 and 30 were disproportionately selected for a weapons check.

The fact-finding investigation concluded that ethnic profiling did not occur on the the dates in question. "The researchers did not find that non-white people and men were disproportionately selected for a weapons check," said Halsema.

The mayor said that the police and the municipality have spoken to the people who were searched without authorization during checks, and that the police apologized to them.

The previous weapons checks in the Zuid, Zuidoost and Noord districts did occur properly and according to administrative agreements. Searches were organized a total of ten times during the trial, with 1,211 people searched as part of the program. A total of 23 weapons were found.