Houses are pelted with eggs, fireworks explode close to homes and residents are startled by banging on their windows. Nieuw-Weerdinge has recently had to deal with more nuisance from young people. The village council and youth worker Kim de Vries have received several reports in recent weeks.
“It goes in waves,” says De Vries. “We actually see this happening every year as the days get shorter.” This prompted her to post a message on Facebook, in which she called on residents to continue reporting and encouraged parents to talk to their children.
“I wanted to show that it has our attention,” she says. “We know approximately which group it is. I will go out to the streets a few more times to see exactly who they are, so that we can make home visits if necessary.”
The nuisance varies. There is also talk of young people shining laser lights into moving cars. “That is life-threatening,” De Vries emphasizes. “They buy those lasers online for a few bucks and don’t realize that they shine meters away. If someone is blinded in traffic, it can end very badly.”
A frequently heard complaint is that residents are deliberately harassed in the evening. “You have to ring the old-fashioned bell,” says De Vries. “But here they do a more intense version: they bang loudly on windows. Not once, but sometimes throughout the evening. And that several evenings in a row. They do that to provoke a reaction. If someone comes out and runs after them, it naturally gives them a kick.”
The notifications differ per week. “One week we get two, the next week three or four, and then nothing for a while,” says De Vries. “The young people are often between 12 and 14 years old, and the behavior usually stems from boredom.”
The youth worker emphasizes that it is important to involve parents. “The reactions differ enormously. There are parents who do not believe that their child does something like that, or who wave it away with: oh, that’s part of it. Others find it annoying, but do not have good control over their child. And there are parents who immediately think about a solution. You often no longer see those families in the reports.”
That is why she especially wants to continue talking to young people. “When you explain how their behavior affects others, you often get a different response. Then they say, ‘Oh, that wasn’t the intention.’ Or you say: suppose someone does this to your sister. Then they suddenly look at it differently.”
Village chairman Wim Katoen sees that patience in the village is decreasing. “It’s no longer about innocent mischief,” he says. “We have reports of young people throwing eggs against windows, chasing animals in the local animal park and racing across the sidewalk with fat bikes. I used to get bored sometimes, but sometimes this really goes too far.”
Katoen notices that residents are sometimes reluctant to report the crime. “People are afraid it will get worse, or think it’s too hard for those boys.” Can you still speak of bad boy pranks? “It’s okay to nonsense once in a while, but if you deliberately pelt houses, that’s it. If they don’t want to listen, action has to be taken. For example, with a HALT program.”
Mirjam de Boer, volunteer at the youth center in the De Badde village hall, also notices that the behavior of some young people is changing. On a typical Friday evening, thirty to forty children come, she says. “We do it purely for the village, because we think it is important that young people have a place here.”
Yet since the end of the summer, some young people have been going out during prom night and staying away. “In practice, this is difficult to enforce. We are volunteers, not police officers,” says De Boer.
There is no nuisance in the club itself, but she is concerned about what is happening outside. “We hear what is going on in the village. These are not our children, but we try where possible to prevent them from going along with it.”
De Boer believes that parents should remain more involved. “Some assume that if their child is at the club, everything will be fine. But as soon as they are outside, we can no longer guarantee that. We all do this voluntarily in addition to our jobs. I mean, it has to remain fun.”