Police officers are visited by the violence with which they were confronted on Saturday during an illegal carmeeting in Budel-Dorplein. One of the agents involved tells about it in a message on social media. “We saw no other way out than driving through the crowd.”
The agents were pelted on Saturday night by masked aggressive people with fireworks and glass when they wanted to stop the illegal carmeeting. A police car was stuck and destroyed.
“The voices of my colleagues that I heard through my radio during this carmeeting is something that nobody wants to hear,” the agent continues. “Let alone what my colleagues must have felt when they were attacked, enclosed and pelted. They saw no other way out of, straight like that, to drive through the crowd.”
Spokesperson Maarten Brink of the Dutch police association says that violence against emergency services is getting harder. “We should not find this normal. I hope that more suspects will be picked up. At the moment itself that is often difficult due to the dangerous circumstances. The first goal of restoring peace as quickly as possible.”
View images of the carpeting here:
Burn-out
The agents had already stopped an illegal carmeeting on the Gerstdijk in Helmond earlier in the evening. Around fifty vehicles from home and abroad had gathered there.
In Budel-Dorplein it was more than two hundred vehicles a short time later. There was racing through the streets at high speed, so-called burnouts were performed with the cars and fireworks were set off.
Baton
Only with extra support from police teams from the region could the carpeting, which, according to the agent, at least four hundred people had come up, could be stopped.
Agents use police dogs and had to use the baton to restore the peace. One person was arrested. In that arrest, a police dog bit the suspect.
Two police officers suffered hearing damage and reported the illegal carmeeting. A report was also made of the destruction of the police car.
