A vigilante chasing an asylum seeker in a corn field with a drone, aerial platform and golf club. There is no better advertising campaign for the call for more police.
In East Groningen, a police surveillance car sometimes drives by. There is not much else to notice about Uncle Officer’s presence. It is therefore not surprising that citizens take the initiative to protect their own home and hearth. But it is undesirable.
About forty to fifty residents of Ter Apel and Nieuw-Weerdinge went after an asylum seeker on Monday who was caught stealing a wallet. He fled into a corn field and managed to escape.
Shame
It is easy to speak of the actions of the vigilante on Monday as a shame. What if… What if the asylum seeker had a knife? What if he had panicked and been hit by a car? What if he had already left his home country traumatized? What if…?
It is not out of luxury that residents of Ter Apel and Nieuw-Weerdinge decide to set up a vigilante group. It is crystal clear that they have to deal with a lot of – petty – crime. Shoplifting and burglaries are rampant. There are also complaints about free travel and aggressive behavior in public transport.
Tin agents
The police do not have enough personnel available to deal with all this nuisance. The new chief of police of the Northern Netherlands, Martin Sitalsing, is very clear about it: “I will not open a can of police officers.”
He has pinned his hopes on the minister, who must come up with a new distribution key for the deployment of police officers. It is still the case that the distribution of budgets depends on population numbers. This means that vast, relatively sparsely populated areas such as East Groningen are sparsely endowed with a handful of civil servants and a single surveillance vehicle.
Willeke Vroom of the civil guard calls the chase mainly a signal. “We feel so let down by the government.” This is not so much the fault of the police, but of those responsible in The Hague. They have been ignoring Ter Apel’s problems for far too long.