After knife incident with 11-year-old: police close four of the five commissariats in Brussels-North | Brussels

Last Sunday evening, a police officer from the Brussels-North zone was attacked by an 11-year-old who had run away from home. The officers found him around 11:30 p.m. in the Noordwijk. But the child simply refused to go with the officers and took out a folding knife, which he used to lash out at one of the inspectors. Small nuance: the pleating knife was closed at that time. But the fact that the public prosecutor’s office let the boy go fairly quickly, caused bad blood.

After that decision, 27 agents from the Brussels-North zone stopped working on Tuesday, which meant that one commissariat had to keep its doors closed. But on the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, another three commissioners followed suit after dozens of police officers had reported sick.

The news is confirmed by the North zone, although they do not want to say that the closure has anything to do with the knife incident on Sunday evening. “Only police station 1 (in the Georges Rodenbachlaan in Schaarbeek, ed.) is open on Tuesday night”, it sounds. “Whether there will be consequences on Wednesday is not yet clear.”

The semi-final of the World Cup between Morocco and France is scheduled for Wednesday evening. In Brussels, agents are ready to deal with new riots. Whether the staffing problems in the North zone will affect this operation of the Brussels police remains to be seen at the moment.

The mayors of Schaerbeek and Sint-Joost-ten-Noode, which are located in the North zone, issued a call on Tuesday evening to the federal government and the Region to review the security situation in the North district. “I think we should now bring together the federal and regional partners who play a role in the district in terms of prevention and security policy in order to solve the problems in a structural way,” said Cécile Jodogne (DéFI), acting mayor of Schaerbeek .

Emir Kir, mayor of Sint-Joost-ten-Noode, also agreed that the safety of the North district must be the “absolute priority of everyone”. “What else do we need to do to raise awareness so that the necessary resources are made available?” said Kir.

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