Drug-related gang violence seems to have spread from the Randstad to Groningen.
Even Edward van der Torre is amazed. Last year, he and his colleague Pieter Tops conducted research into drug crime in the province. The criminologist did not see it coming that gangs in Groningen, Winschoten and Oude Pekela are scaring each other with bomb attacks.
There have already been 358 explosions at homes and business premises in the Netherlands this year. Lately it has been happening almost every day, especially in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Rotterdammer Van der Torre can talk about it. “At first they seemed like incidents, now it’s a pattern. If I leave my bedroom window open, the explosions sometimes wake me up at night, even though they are not happening near me.”
In the past few weeks it has spread to Groningen. Yet he finds it difficult to answer the question of whether it is copying behavior. “So far it seems to be limited to one gang war in Groningen.”
‘Groningen countryside ideal for drug criminals’
In the second half of 2022, when he crossed Groningen to conduct research, there were no signs that something like this could happen here. He did see that ‘the vast, relatively sparsely populated countryside’ is an ideal working area for drug criminals. “We mainly received information about hemp cultivation a la Dutch Hope . There were also some criminals who seemed a bit more agitated and aggressive. My dominant image was: if you stay under the radar here, then cultivation and trade will do well. I have sometimes thought: if I want to get into hemp cultivation again, I will do so in an area like this.”
For a long time there was a lot of drug crime in the Netherlands, but no public violence. “They did use internal violence but tried to prevent it from coming out. I really wouldn’t have thought what’s happening in Rotterdam now was possible five years ago, simply because it didn’t seem to be in the interests of criminals.”
In Groningen, criminals were also involved in conflicts, but did not fight them out in public. After all, they prefer to stay under the radar. “They are careful not to be in the spotlight.”
‘Violence a byproduct of drug crime’
Perhaps, Van der Torre reasons, drug crime has now become so great that the risk of public violence has increased accordingly. “Is it something that is copied and skipped? Or are we dealing with a new type of criminal who settles conflicts in this way? I think drug crime has become so extensive that it is now a by-product.”
An obvious comparison is with countries where this has been happening for a long time, such as Mexico. “It does indeed raise the question of what this gang violence says about the Netherlands. What should you do as a government in response? I don’t think it was decided on Budget Day that much more money would go to justice and security. Public violence is not yet a pattern in Groningen. Drug crime and investments are, so you need more capacity in the police, the judiciary and municipalities to respond to that.”
Van der Torre points out that in recent decades the police have had to make do with a strength that was largely based on population. “Along that line, the amount of crime was also predicted, as it were. There would be less crime in areas with a relatively low population density. If you look at it with today’s wisdom, you see a province with three seaports, a border with Germany, several holiday parks, asylum seekers’ centers and Ter Apel. This takes up a lot of police capacity. You cannot say that the government is absent, but it is so thinly present that crime can continue to proliferate quite unhindered.”
‘There is more going on than we thought’
He has it in 2020 Towards a Pact for the Rule of Law advocated an additional investment of 0.4 billion euros in the fight against drug crime. “That happened, but now we see that it is not enough at all. It’s gotten worse. There is more going on than we thought at the time. Not only in the Randstad and Brabant, but now also in Groningen.”
He maintains that the problem in Groningen is still the large amount of money that is earned with drugs and then invested in the upper world. “That usually happens in real estate. But now the house is suddenly on fire. I hope this isn’t a new phase in drug crime, but I think so.”
‘Italian features with violence as a show of power’
He refers to the note Towards a Pact for the Rule of Law 2.0 which he released in August together with Peter Noordanus and Pieter Tops. It warns that undermining drug crime is penetrating deep into the capillaries of our society. “A culture of criminal violence has emerged that has “Italian characteristics”, with violence as a show of power that disrupts the judicial system.”
What surprises Van der Torre most is the silence about the explosions in politics in The Hague. “I am really perplexed by how calmly the response to this is in The Hague. It’s as if they didn’t hear the explosions in the Binnenhof.”