Number of violent deaths in Amsterdam this year already higher than 2023 total
A fatal shooting under the Westelijke Merwedekanaaldijk bridge in Amsterdam last week brought the total number of violent deaths in the city so far this year to 12. That is one more than the total number of people killed by violence in the Dutch capital in all of 2023.
The suspects in at least four of this year’s murder or manslaughter cases are “disturbed” people. Disturbed is a blanket term used by the Dutch authorities to cover people with mental health problems or going through a mental breakdown.
On June 17, a 32-year-old suspect stabbed a 37-year-old Amsterdam man to death in the Jordaan district. According to Parool, the suspect has mental health problems, and the stabbing happened after the suspect refused to pay for fries at the Aggie snack bar on Tweede Goudsbloemdwarsstraat.
On March 22, 21-year-old Benfir Ç. stabbed her 80-year-old grandmother to death on James Cookstraat. She called the emergency services herself, shouting: I stabbed my grandmother, my grandmother! Please help, bring an ambulance! I killed her.” The young woman’s mental state on the day of the incident is still being assessed.
On January 19, 90-year-old Jan van B. stabbed his 84-year-old wife and set fire to their home. The mentally unwell man called for help himself. Firefighters found the woman with multiple stab wounds in a chair, with a blanket covering her. She died in the hospital.
On January 14, 64-year-old Julia K. stabbed her 73-year-old husband in their home on Sint Janskruid in Diemen and strangled him with a belt. She is still undergoing psychological assessment.
“This has been a growing problem for years,” Jasper van der Kemp, a criminologist and lecturer at the VU University in Amsterdam, told the Telegraaf. “Since the cuts in mental healthcare, the number of incidents involving disturbed people has increased.”
Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema also raised concerns about the increasing number of incidents involving people with mental health problems. “The tragedy is also that people who have absolutely no wrong intentions can become very dangerous,” Halsema told Parool in September. But with widespread staff shortages and a limited budget, a quick solution doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.
Amsterdam police chief Frank Pauw acknowledged that the number of violent deaths is higher than last year, but he isn’t too concerned. At 12, he wouldn’t immediately call Amsterdam a “murder city,” Paauw said in an interview with AT5. “Also, because I know that if it is not a cluster of serious organized crime, these are the variables that can occur in a big city.”
Criminologist Van der Kemp also stressed that the number of violent deaths has “decreased enormously” in recent decades. “Murder and manslaughter are quite erratic and depend on many factors, but 20 years ago, many more people died due to violence,” he told the Telegraaf. In the 1990s, around 480 murders were committed in Amsterdam. That number has been decreasing since the turn of the century and has stabilized at between 10 and 15 violent deaths per year in recent years.
