‘I rang the doorbell at the gallery flat. From the top floor, Ria opened the door, through the intercom, without asking who was at the door downstairs. She was waiting for me upstairs. I estimate she was around 90. She walked with a walker, was widowed, no children, lonely – the perfect victim for the thug guild with a chatter trick.
“Good afternoon, I’m Brenda, the police officer,” I said. “I hear you were robbed.” In her living room, she explained how she had been scammed. A nice man rang the bell and said he was from the housing association and came to check on a leak. She wanted to let him in, but he said, “Go ahead, because you know the way.” He seemed to close the front door behind him—but he didn’t—and they walked to the bathroom together. There he opened the tap wide so that she heard nothing more.
“Meanwhile, an accomplice in her bedroom had stolen the jewelry box from her nightstand. When she said that it contained her deceased husband’s wedding ring, Ria burst into tears. It’s childish to rob old people who are defenseless. I’m very bad at that.
‘To my astonishment, a few weeks later I got a message that someone else had been in her house with such a scammer trick. Now money had been stolen from her. Ria was now so anxious that she no longer dared go outside, not even to do some shopping. My heart broke.
‘In my neighborhood, defrauding the elderly was commonplace, so it had even happened twice to her. I thought: what can I do to protect such people? I discussed my frustrations in the community center with Ans, the social worker, and together we came up with the idea to set up a resilience training for old people. Ans knew a couple who gave self-defense lessons; a boom of a guy and a feisty woman. The four of us put together a training of twelve lessons for people over 60. We made flyers, ‘Ouwer met power’, which we put in letterboxes and distributed in nursing homes and on the Dappermarkt. We started with fourteen spots, and it was full.
‘I remember the first meeting well. We had coffee and cookies, pushed all the tables to one side in the community center and put the chairs in a circle. We waited curiously for the participants. And sure enough, who came in there? Ria, almost 90, leaning on her walker. Awesome.
‘We did an introductory round. Ria told that she had been robbed twice, and again she shot full. Many victims of chat tricks feel ashamed, feel stupid that they fall for it. But this was a group of like-minded people, everyone had experienced bad things. One of the women even had a gun to her head. They supported each other and it quickly became a close-knit club.
“We met every Tuesday morning for twelve weeks. We used the participants’ stories as examples in role plays. We showed videos, taught them all about chat tricks, explained that you can just have a friendly conversation with loiterers and how they could defend themselves. The trainer made a round and said: ‘You are not in good shape. Come on, tits out and shoulders back! Radiate self-confidence.’
He taught that you should kick someone who gets too close on the toes, then the focus goes to his feet and you can kneel or grab a man by the pocket. ‘And then don’t squeeze’, we said, ‘just twist’, making a twisting movement with our hands. There was a lot of laughter about that and it became our weekly closing word: ‘Don’t squeeze, but turn.’ The mere fact that the trainer was such a hefty guy that they could do anything with, even slap him, helped many participants overcome their fears. The district provided security cameras and spacers for their doors, we handed out whistles to make noise when they were harassed in the street.
‘We have organized the course for several years, three times a year. The elderly loved to come there. It was a success and the course was also rolled out in other city districts, until unfortunately our initiative was cut short. My plea to the district was to no avail. That’s a shame, because with the course we could avoid misery, that gave me a lot of satisfaction. Police work is always repressive. You know: an investigation afterwards usually leads to nothing, people do not know how to describe the suspect or their jewelry well and it does not have much priority, so the chance of being caught is small. These workouts did work.
‘At least Ria has benefited from it. After the course she said: ‘Thanks to you I dare to take to the streets again.’ It was beautiful: she came in crouched, like a frightened bird, and after twelve weeks went out proudly upright. You can’t get a nicer compliment.’