The officer who aimed at a tractor during the farmer’s protest in Heerenveen on Tuesday evening feared for the safety of the employees with whom he acted there, says chief commissioner Gery Veldhuis of the Northern Netherlands police unit. NRC† “I think it was a misjudgment.”
The sixteen-year-old driver of the tractor was uninjured, but the bullet did hit the windshield of the tractor. The damage will be compensated, Veldhuis confirms in the newspaper. Because the National Criminal Investigation Department is still investigating the incident, he does not want to say much about it. The officer who fired the shot “is through it”, according to Veldhuis.
During the protests, three tractors were seized this week and Veldhuis wants to do this more often in the coming period, in order to prevent farmers from using the tractors as a means of violence. He points out that the protests are the result of the nitrogen policy. “I notice that there is no movement whatsoever on that policy.”