In Overvecht, young people are rioting against the police. The neighborhood is trying to get a picture of them, with the help of a martial arts school

A young version of Mike Tyson looks out at visitors to The Colosseum Gym, a martial arts school on the edge of the Overvecht district of Utrecht. A large poster of the boxer hangs above the stairs in the hall. More than a hundred people are training in the gym this Thursday evening. A teenage girl is sparring with a boy of the same height and weight. She accidentally kicks his groin. He bursts into tears. “Stop crying. Do you have a small penis or something?” says head kickboxing coach Kevin van Heeckeren (33).

The martial arts school wants to keep young people out of the criminal circuit. In collaboration with the municipality, police and probation service, the trainers try to help participants in a youth program established in 2023 – young people between the ages of 14 and 23 – gain control over their future. “During the intake we immediately try to break through the street status,” says Danny de Vries (60), co-founder of The Colosseum Gym and one of the initiators of the youth project. “The gym is all about equality and respect, regardless of background.”

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De Vries himself used to be “a street urchin” in Overvecht. After he was stabbed, it was martial arts that set him straight. He was able to move on to the police through a youth project. He worked for the surveillance service for fifteen years, and for another fifteen for the arrest team.

Rules, structure and discipline help young people stay on the right path. Sometimes the trainers see the young people, as young as thirteen, hanging around in the evenings with “bad boys”. Kickboxing is a contact sport, sparring with a punch or a kick always takes place in a safe and controlled setting, says De Vries. In Van Heeckeren’s lesson he gives a participant a corrective tap. “For some young people, this physical experience provides more insight than conversations would,” says kickboxing trainer Van Heeckeren – who “wasn’t a sweetheart either.”

Loneliness and psychological problems

The youth program in the martial arts school is there for a reason: in the Utrecht Overvecht district, youth nuisance has been increasing again in recent years – after a peak in 2020 with 946 reports, the nuisance subsequently decreased. In 2024, the number of police registrations of youth nuisance from Overvecht increased by almost 20 percent compared to 2022, to 443. This is evident from the report Samen voor Overvecht (2025). A low point were riots that took place in mid-March. More than fifty young people had agreed – probably via social media – to come to a street in the neighborhood. When the police arrested a suspected scooter rider after a chase, dozens of young people started pelting the officers with fireworks, branches, stones and glass.

While the police waited for reinforcements from the riot police, a stationary city bus was used as a shield. When a riot police platoon arrived at 1 a.m., the young people were gone. Two officers suffered hearing damage from the fireworks explosions. A few days later, four suspects were arrested, including two minors. One of the adult suspects is still in custody.

A fifth suspect was recently arrested for assaulting a PowNed journalist. The day after the riots, the journalist reported on the devastation with two camera persons. On images that PowNed shared, The eighteen-year-old boy can be seen hitting the journalist hard on the head. He indicated that he did not want to be filmed.

Research by the national NPLV program (see box) and the monitor report Samen voor Overvecht shows that a large group of young people are looking for their place in society. In the neighborhood, more than one in five young adults feels lonely or has psychological complaints. Some young people experience discrimination or find it more difficult to get a place in a training course, says Sharon Dijksma, mayor of Utrecht, on the telephone. NRC.

The problems mainly affect boys in large families with one parent, where there are few financial resources and little insight into what is happening on the street. “Due to crowds at home, young people look for entertainment on the street and become isolated,” says Dijksma.

After the riots, Dijksma submitted an urgent request for his own riot squad in Utrecht to Minister David van Weel of Justice and Security. Cities such as Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam already have this. Central Netherlands also needs it, says Dijksma. “Just like Utrecht, Almere and Urk also have quite a lot of youth problems.” The “urgent” appeal still stands, says Dijksma. “If you [Van Weel] this reads, help.”

Criminal career

More than half of the at-risk youth who grow up in the neighborhood are at risk of ending up in organized crime. Overvecht is part of the 10 percent neighborhoods in the Netherlands with most residents suspected or convicted of subversive crimes, according to the report Samen voor Overvecht and research by the Zicht op Ondermijning platform (2022).

The “criminal career” of young people from Overvecht usually starts with a shoplifting or traffic violation, such as driving without a driver’s license. Getting a grip on who these young people are is difficult: “The nuisance has a diffuse and fluid character,” says Willem Zonneveld, local police officer in Overvecht, by email. The incidents, which often change shape, are therefore not easy to link to faces.

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Young people at risk are increasingly organizing themselves in temporary or digital networks, such as Snapchat or Telegram. In the police, youth officers and special digital community police officers monitor public online groups. They try to recognize signals prior to riots, for example. It is not yet known on which medium the young people from the riots in March found each other.

Young people often congregate in parking lots, shopping centers and locations with little traffic or passers-by. “Sometimes a cat and mouse game ensues when we receive a report of noise pollution. As soon as we arrive, the boys quickly run away,” says Zonneveld.

NRC I also see it for myself in Overvecht: there is noise pollution, illegal fireworks, and empty laughing gas tanks in the grass at a playground. There is noise from passing cars from street races organized near the shopping center. A teenage boy throws a rock through the glass wall of a bus shelter. The group of about eight boys sprints away, shouting. They take shelter behind a high-rise apartment building.

Earn boxing gloves

Back at martial arts school The Colosseum Gym, founder Danny de Vries tells how young people are seduced by the promise of quick money, by selling drugs or emptying containers at the ports. After the training, three teenage boys are ready to talk about the neighborhood with visible reluctance. But after the first question they withdraw, so as not to “snitching” and not to endanger themselves.

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The young people must arrive on time for the training and wear clean clothes. With good behavior they can earn boxing gloves or shin guards, says De Vries. About fifteen young people a year earn a bag full of sports equipment this way. “In this way they build a long-term mentality, for example to go back to school, work or internship.”

At the martial arts school, two boys also walk around with an ankle monitor. A WhatsApp group has been created for them, including the boy himself and his parents, a trainer and a PGA supervisor. If the boy does not arrive at class on time or does not come home after class, a local police officer will be deployed.

That’s what’s so great about the youth project, says De Vries: that the lines of communication are short. And that young people learn to regulate their aggression. A boy who was arrested at the age of fifteen for trafficking in automatic firearms, followed the youth program and is now the manager of all the sports halls in Overvecht. Van Heeckeren also sees how “brotherhood” arises in the gym. “They take friends to the gym or go paintballing together.” But, says De Vries: “There are also people who die.”

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