Tolga Koklu will be a new police chief for restless unit Rotterdam

Tolga Koklu (55) will become the highest boss of the police in the Rotterdam unit from 1 September. This is confirmed by several sources within the police.

Because of his appointment, two of the ten regional units of the National Police will have a chief of unit with a migration background. In 2023, Hamit Karakus was appointed police chief of the police in Noord-Holland. He was the first chief commissioner of Turkish descent. Koklu was also born in Turkey.

Zoom in

Koklu will be the successor of police chief Fred Westerbeke who will resign in Rotterdam after 5.5 years next month. Westerbeke becomes adviser to the police force. The upcoming appointment of Koklu fits in with the aim of the National Police to become a more diverse organization.

Check

In recent years, the Rotterdam police have regularly been discredited by the actions of agents. In August 2024, via NRC It is known that there is a “socially unsafe working climate” at the Center of the Rotterdam Police Center as a result of ‘poor mutual manners’ and ‘failing leadership’. After an external investigation carried out, the police drew that conclusion after complaints by agents about, among other things, discrimination, bullying and excessive violence from police officers. The Labor Inspectorate started an investigation this year after complaints into the working climate within the police in Rotterdam.

In 2020, the Rotterdam police announced after reporting from NRC A “in -depth investigation” into racist statements by police officers in their own WhatsApp group. In conversations of nine police officers in the ‘Jan Smit Appgroep’, as they call their group, citizens with a migration background were referred to as ‘cancer people, pussy Africans and pauper alligers’ on whom they want to ‘shoot’.

The new police chief of the National Police, Janny Knol, who took office last year, called these incidents in an interview “Inhuman behavior. It makes me angry. It damages confidence in the police.”

In 2023, a agent from the Rotterdam police who had previously convicted was appointed for a racist insult to a managerial position at the Aliens Police. That decision was withdrawn after criticism.

Police academy

Koklu started his police career in 1991 in Limburg. He was then Seven years of Security Manager at Holland Casino. Later he worked in, among other things, the unit leadership in The Hague. Koklu was appointed deputy police chief in Rotterdam last year. Koklu also worked at the Police Academy, for which he followed the International Management Development process for two years. In that context, he also worked as a program manager at the European Police Academy in Budapest. Hiij was also a senior strategic adviser for international police cooperation between Germany and the Netherlands for three years.

Koklu does not want to respond yet because his appointment as a Rotterdam unit chief still has to be formally settled.

To share





Mail the editors