Former chairman of the ACP police union Gerrit van de Kamp was rightly dismissed last year. That is what the District Court of Central Netherlands ruled on Monday, it appears from a verdict published Thursday. According to the judge, Van de Kamp has indeed displayed sexually transgressive behavior and behaved in a “seriously culpable manner”. The union – where he has worked since 1995 and was chairman of for almost twenty years – does not have to pay him a severance payment.
Read also: New reports to the police union about cross-border behavior Gerrit van de Kamp
Several reports of transgressive behavior had been received against Van de Kamp. In the case, the judge looked at WhatsApp messages that Van de Kamp sent to a female colleague, in which he says several times “that he misses her”, asks her “to wear a red dress with pumps”, her “bitch” and “honey,” and says that “her hair is so nice and long and she can only go to the hairdresser with his permission.” According to the former chairman, the colleague also showed flirtatious behavior towards him, but the judge says that this is insufficiently apparent from the apps, and that it does not show that she appreciated his apps. According to the judge, Van de Kamp’s behavior was “inappropriate” and “inadmissible” in a professional setting, all the more so because as chairman he had an exemplary function.
Intimidating
In court, Van de Kamp said that his behavior before MeToo and the Voice scandal was ‘normal’, but the judge does not agree with that either: “Behavior as described above was also long before (if not always) unacceptable.” Van de Kamp also paid the same colleague an unannounced home visit, which the judge calls “unusual”. Especially since he had sex with her during a home visit to a sick colleague in 2006, after which the question was already asked whether he could stay on as chairman.
Although the verdict mainly refers to one female colleague, several people experienced Van de Kamp’s leadership style as “dominant and intimidating”. Last year, the police union received several signals about cross-border behavior from the former chairman.
Van de Kamp will appeal against the ruling, reports the AD.