The Public Prosecution Service is going to store images from highway cameras to be able to investigate criminal offenses during farmer actions. A spokesperson for OM East Netherlands confirms this on Friday NRC after reporting from NOS. It is not often that (some of) the three thousand cameras that Rijkswaterstaat uses to promote traffic flow are used for investigations.
The Public Prosecution Service emphasizes only recording images of “incidents at specific locations, where (serious) criminal offenses occur that endanger safety on and around the road”. The judiciary can use these images afterwards to prove criminal offenses, such as dumping waste, and to build a case against suspects. This means that recordings from all three thousand cameras will not be saved continuously.
In the past week, farmers dumped car tires, hay bales and manure heaps on highways, among other things, in protest against the government’s nitrogen plans. This led to accidents in several places in the country, in which at least one car was a total loss. There were also traffic jams and the police decided to close sections of the highway for safety reasons. On Thursday evening, a farmer who dumped waste on the A18 near Westendorp in Gelderland was caught red-handed and arrested.
In response to calls to use the highway cameras to track down the perpetrators earlier this week, Rijkswaterstaat released a statement on Thursday. still know that the cameras cannot be used for that purpose. The Public Prosecution Service says, together with the police and Rijkswaterstaat, that it has “now” made it possible to secure the images. The Public Prosecution Service does not want to say what exactly has changed, so as not to reveal details about investigative methods.
Also read: Politicians only send a few tweets about the latest farmers’ actions