A 27-year-old man died in Waalwijk on Thursday evening after being shot by the police. It often happens that the police have to intervene and the suspect dies. But is that allowed, and what happens then?
Police officers and special forces are trained to prepare them for a variety of scenarios. Think of escalated robberies, domestic violence or firearms situations. Sometimes the police cannot avoid using force themselves, for example to de-escalate immediately and keep citizens safe.
And that’s okay. The police have a monopoly on violence in the Netherlands. This means that the police may use force to enforce the law. But that is of course not an easy thing to do. That violence must be justifiable, as is written in the same law.
When can the police use force?
First, violence must be proportionate. The police do not immediately reach for a firearm if they cannot reach a suspect while talking. With violence you should therefore also think of hitting with a baton and using an electric shock weapon or pepper spray. A suspect does not have to sustain serious injuries.
But in extreme cases, officers use their service firearms. According to the law, an officer may target a suspect if the violence is ‘proportionate to the seriousness of the situation and the crime’. That is not often the case, as it turns out. Targeted shooting at suspects is very rare in the Netherlands.
This happens, for example, when agents are in acute danger. That is called an emergency. But officers are also allowed to shoot if they try to arrest someone who commits a violent crime or who is a firearms hazard. This may have been the case in Waalwijk.
What happens after the police shoot someone?
In Waalwijk, the outcome of that violence was fatal. When a civilian is killed or seriously injured as a result of police intervention, the Public Prosecution Service starts an investigation. The Public Prosecution Service is obliged to have this investigation carried out by the National Criminal Investigation Department.
The National Criminal Investigation Department is not just a branch of ‘justice’. It is an impartial investigative service that independently investigates whether the violence used by police officers is justifiable. That will also happen after the raid in Waalwijk. Until the investigation is completed, the agent is always regarded as a suspect.
During such an investigation, the emotional aspects are taken into account. After all, it is a conflict with a deadly outcome. With such emotional aspects you have to think of the psychological consequences for victims and relatives, but also for police officers.
‘I became a suspect’
For example, the Brabant police spokesman Eric Passchier told in the television program De Wereld Draait Door years ago how he was forced to shoot at a suspect as a police officer in 1996.
The event and its aftermath had many psychological consequences for Passchier. “I became a suspect. That slowed down 1.4 second film is on my hard drive. I can play the event again in a moment. It remains a wound in my life. It has healed but it is a very thin sheet and if you When I rub it on, I can feel it again,” he said.
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