The police brutality during the corona demonstration is fundamentally different from the violence against George Floyd

The blow to a head in The Hague cannot simply be compared with the knee on George Floyd’s neck. Agents are executors of a policy that is made elsewhere.

The UN rapporteur on torture stands firm: some police officers crossed the line during corona demonstrations in the Netherlands. In an interview with de Volkskrant Nils Melzer maintained his observation that the bats and dogs were raging too hard during confrontations in Amsterdam last week and The Hague last year. “I see a defenseless, unarmed prisoner against whom agents use senseless, excessive force.” And because nobody intervened, he said, that could well be a ‘systemic problem’.

First and foremost: always useful, such a foreign view. The past two years have once again shown that our proud stubbornness, with its intelligent lockdowns and unnecessary masks and well-timed boosters, does not always lead to the right insights. It’s quite possible that we also think too chauvinistically about our cozy the-police-is-your-best-friend culture.

But to equate police brutality with that against George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, as Melzer does, is exaggerated to say the least. The knee on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes was murder, a court has found. In any case, the blow to the head of the detainee in The Hague was not; what it was is yet to be determined by a court. The Public Prosecution Service already charged the agents last month, even before Melzer insisted.

Apart from the different consequences for the two detainees, the starting situation was also different. In the case of Floyd, an individual, passive detainee was overpowered by a force majeure of agents, in the case of The Hague it was a demonstrator in a group that aggressively raged with a jumper cable, and is suspected of attempted aggravated assault. Protesters can also cross the line. There is a point after which officers are allowed to throw punches. Then there is a point where they have to stop. The question is whether they have stayed in that margin.

Much has been written in recent days about empathy and empathy for the unvaccinated. The same can be said for the cops who stand against them to enforce the law, our laws – they too are our neighbors and neighbors, fathers, daughters, friends, girlfriends. Polarization grows as we reduce individuals to the group they belong to. And then more violence is lurking.

Agents are ultimately the executors of decisions made above them. When the situation gets out of hand, the most important questions need to be asked at that higher level. Was it wise to ban the demonstration last week? Was it wise to enclose the protesters (in the US this leads to kettling-tactics, creating a ‘cauldron’ from which the enclosed group can escape slowly, often to confrontations)? Did these decisions give the ringleaders an opportunity they seized?

A complicating factor, of course, is that a minority deliberately uses such demonstrations to provoke. The police response, filmed up close and put on social media with proper frames, justifies the following demonstration. The dynamics of perceived victimization further increases the polarization – and is something that those responsible will have to take into account.

In the meantime, it is good if those involved in violent incidents have to answer to the courts. Unlike the US, the police unions are also in favor of this. Nobody wants these incidents to become ‘systemic’.