A few hours after the brutal murder of lawyer Derk Wiersum in 2019, Minister Ferd Grapperhaus wanted to radiate decisiveness. The Minister of Justice and Security was under intense political pressure to take tough measures against organized crime. The day after the murder, Grapperhaus therefore announced a special new unit: the Multidisciplinary Intervention Team (MIT), a collaboration between six different services to ‘tackle the toughest criminal networks’.
On paper it all sounded fantastically decisive, but three years later – and 160 million euros later – MIT has already died a quiet death. In a shocking broadcast of argos In less than twenty minutes we learned the history of failure of an organization that was hastily built with many words and little substance. None of the organizations were involved in its creation, and then MIT also snatched the best researchers everywhere from long-term studies. Executives had to sit and watch as their most qualified people were swallowed up by an organization that didn’t even exist yet.
But for Grapperhaus the image was more important, because a little crime fighter also has a task force. However, the requested e-mail traffic showed that no one really stood behind the service. The Ministry of Defense even referred to the plan as ‘roaring texts that fit better in an election program’. According to those involved, the set-up of MIT was based on smoothly running sentences without tangible content, whereby Grapperhaus was mainly concerned with the image formation. For example, the minister himself suggested making a ‘penetrating film’, with ‘unfiltered stories from those directly involved’, for more ‘shock effect in the political story’. (Grapperhaus himself could not be reached for an explanation, because he was on vacation. It could happen.)
Meanwhile, the successor of Grapperhaus continued her ‘honour’ round on SBS 6 after her HJ Schoo lecture. Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz took a seat in Today Inside, where she could especially discuss with the right-wing conscience of Johan Derksen, who fulminated about the ‘deadly poison’ of the woke community, the Public Prosecution Service (which made itself ‘ridiculous’ by investigating his candle anecdote) and the VVD, which ‘voters as he had chased away. Moments later, René van der Gijp told me cheerfully that his dogs had become confused by his bare cuddly mouse.
The minister laughed cheerfully, and effortlessly kept himself standing at the regular table. Only in the last five minutes did the offending MIT come into play, with Wilfred Genee Yeşilgöz asking what exactly she was going to do about serious crime. If the minister had to ‘put it short’, it mainly came down to ‘little boys who were not allowed to become big crooks’ and ‘taking the big criminals off the street’. We were going to ‘win the battle’, but that wasn’t just done tomorrow.
If the big words beat the content long enough, that battle can indeed take a while.