National Police

Since 2015 the police spent 4.7 million euros on lawyers assisting police officers, for example because they used violence, NOS reports based on figures requested from the police. 

The falling crime figures in the Netherlands sometimes clash with reality, National Police chief Erik Akerbom said on Wednesday at the presentation of the police's annual results for 2017. Last year crime figures fell by 11 percent, the fifth year in a row that there's been a decline.

In 2017 the Dutch police had fewer incidents in which a police officer used violence during the course of his or her duties than in the year before. Last year cops in the Netherlands used violence 12,394 times, compared to 14,672 in 2016, the National Police announced on Monday.

These uses of violence include all forms of violence the police can use if a situation demands it, such as firing a warning shot or directly at a suspect, pepper spray, baton, or physical violence.

Last year police officers in the Netherlands faced 9,101 incidents of verbal or physical violence directed at them. That means that every day last year 25 police officers were insulted, threatened or physically abused while working, NOS reports.

The police responded to a record number of 83,501 incidents involving "disturbed" persons last year, an increase of 12 percent compared to 2016. Between 2013 and 2016 the number of incidents involving disturbed persons increased by nearly 60 percent, according to figures the police released on Tuesday.

Noord-Nederland received the most reports of incidents involving someone showing disturbed behavior with 13,806. Den Haag followed with 10,764, and then Noord-Nederland with 9,862.  

National Police Chief Erik Akerboom wants a mental health worker available in every neighborhood in the Netherlands. The police increasingly have to respond to emergency situations involving people with mental health problems, and this can be avoided if they get the help they need before things get out of hand, he said in an interview with newspaper AD.

Police union ACP is calling for more transparency on the costs involved in police deployment to demonstrations. "Our plea is that the police will show how many demonstrations there are a year and  what the costs of these demonstrations are", union chairman Gerrit van de Kamp said to RTL Nieuws.

The police discriminated against an administrative officer by forbidding her to wear a headscarf when interacting with the public, the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights ruled on Monday in a complaint filed by the Rotterdam officer, NOS reports.

The officer in question, Sarah Izat, was allowed to wear a headscarf while performing her administrative duties, but had to remove it when interacting with the public - such as when she took 3D declarations.

A police officer in Rotterdam turned to the College of Human Rights to fight the ban on police officers wearing a headscarf or hijab with their uniform. The woman argues that this is differential treatment based on religion, NU.nl reports.

The woman works mainly in an administrative post at the Rotterdam police. The police leadership allows her to wear her headscarf while doing administrative tasks, but she has to take it off when she has contact with the public in her uniform. 

Registered crime in the Netherlands dropped for the second year in a row in 2016, according to the criminal law and enforcement report published by Statistics Netherlands, scientific research and documentation center WODC and the Judicial Council on Monday. The police registered fewer crimes and arrested fewer suspects in 2016 than in 2015, resulting a decrease in cases through almost the entire criminal law chain.

In the coming years, the Dutch police's gray handcuffs will be replaced by black ones. One reason for this is that the black handcuffs are less visible at night, which means that it will take longer for suspects to notice that they're about to be cuffed, a spokesperson for the National Police said to ANP after reports in AD.