Organisation Police Debate: Radically rethinking our role Written on Wednesday, October 23, 2024 The time for minor adjustments is past; we have to radically change the way we do things. Wilbert Paulissen, the Chief Constable of the Oost-Brabant Unit, was resolute in Tuesday evening’s debate at the Netherlands Police Academy in Apeldoorn. ‘The criminal justice system is completely running aground, and small adjustments can no longer save it. We have to make reporting an incident to the police less the default option and find a different solution.’ That was one of his points. The demand for the police is greater than the police can provide. That has always been the case. But in recent years it has become increasingly difficult to balance expectations and reality. The various mayors are joining in the public debate, and the cabinet has new plans. And within the police organization itself, too, the police are hard at work on a new strategy. The Police Debate afforded the space to shine a light, from various angles, on the challenges the police face – and will continue to face over the years to come. Solver of all problems ‘We’re all too happy to see the police as the solver of all problems’, said Jaco van Hoorn. During the debate, he sketched a raw and honest picture of the challenges confronting the police. ‘If people call, we come. We pick up the pieces. Wherever things go wrong, the police are there. That is difficult to manage or predict, administratively speaking.’ In his view, policy documents all too often aim to change the reality. And that doesn’t work. Lack of connection Chief Constable Wilbert Paulissen has the same opinion. As he sees it, the police are staking everything on a community-policing approach, whereas the challenges are ever broader. ‘It has been decided that we must somehow find some sort of online format for the whole “know and be known” idea. But we can’t even pull it off in the various neighbourhoods in our cities, let alone online.’ In Paulissen’s view, other public parties need to play a more dominant role in city neighbourhoods when it comes to improving people’s sense of connection. And on the internet he sees public-private collaboration as a promising way to keep the web safe. Just for show The lack of connection with city neighbourhoods is also a thorn in the eye of Professor Pieter van Vollenhoven. As an adviser at the The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, he advocates having fixed neighbourhood teams, with between seven and nine police officers per 10,000 inhabitants. These teams would be stationed at fixed locations in the neighbourhood, and would be headed by the mayor. ‘Because the current position of the mayor as a person in authority is all just for show.’, he said during an interview before the start of the debate. ‘Police officers in the small and mid-sized municipalities are often diverted for tasks at the national level. In this way, it is effectively the police organization that determines what authority a mayor has. This is not a good thing, in my view. The responsibilities need to be clear. And that is not the case at the moment’, said Van Vollenhoven. Fixed teams with a physical presence in the neighbourhood Teun Meurs, a lector in Community Policing at the Netherlands Police Academy, is in favour of fixed teams that are physically present at fixed locations in the neighbourhood. But you do have to think about how you would actually set it up in practice. ‘Do you have those people all sitting there at a desk all day, waiting for someone to come along? Should a neighbourhood police station like that be open to the public? Do you share it with partners? But then how do you hold a briefing, and where do you put your firearm? And how would digital contact complement this? I’d like to devise an action research project to help work on this.’ Too quick with filing police reports Wilbert Paulissen does not see small steps as the way to solve the problem. He advocates a paradigm shift: radically rethinking the role of the police. A thousand new employees won’t really solve much, in his view. ‘The criminal justice system is already at breaking point – you can’t pile on any more.’ As he sees it, the police’s service provision concept is too much focused on offering solutions of all kinds. And the police are quick to proceed with filing a police report, whereas in many cases it actually has very little added value. This idea of filing a police report as a default option is really something that has to change, in his opinion. Marketplace fraud One example Paulissen mentioned was marketplace fraud. ‘Ultimately what it comes down to is for someone to get their money back. A phone call to the perpetrator will sometimes be a lot more effective than drawing up an official police report.’ The same applies to shoplifting. Shoplifting incidents together amount to about 70% of all reports to the police. ‘At the moment, two police officers spend about four hours on each report before they can go back into the streets. Together with shopkeepers, we should explore new ways of handling this’, Paulissen said. Irresponsible Paulissen also referred to the three hundred vice cases that had accumulated in Oost-Brabant at a certain point. ‘All those people are waiting for an answer. That is irresponsible, in my view.’ In vice cases, 90% of the time the perpetrator is someone known to the victim. If you follow the Swedish model and record police statements in hospital instead of at the police station, this creates a completely different dynamic. The same goes for immediately assigning the victim a victim lawyer. Often mediation will solve much more than criminal law. A thousand things According to Ton Heerts, mayor of Apeldoorn, policy decisions mean a thousand things are pushed on to the police. The example he gave was mental health patients who have been moved out of institutions and into local neighbourhoods. That creates a lot of work for the police. ‘We have to make it possible for mental health patients to be hospitalized for longer periods again. It’s no longer feasible to have everyone participate fully in society’, Heerts held in the debate. New generation A new generation of police officers are about to embark on their career. Daniël Nijland is a trainee police officer. He hopes that once he finishes his studies, he will mainly have time for young people in the neighbourhood, time to ‘kick a ball around’ with them. ‘Prevention was for me probably the most important reason to start police training’, he said. Society feels the need for more connection, and that will also apply in the future. If it were up to him, there would be more attention for this in police training. ‘Now we start off with spectacular footage of police chases and arrests. But in practice of course it’s a lot less exciting.’ Police as a connecting factor Nijland’s fellow student Anne Berntsen agrees. She too sees a role for the police as a connecting factor in society, with above all close collaboration with partners in their network. ‘In our training programmes we don’t yet learn enough about what network partners you can call on and how. That should be part of the training. You can’t get away with just “you’ll pick all that up on the job”.’ Support In the concluding words of the Police Debate, the two students were backed up by Deputy Commissioner Liesbeth Huyzer. Foundational police training has been reduced from four to two years. According to Huyzer, this has come at the expense of learning a neighbourhood-focused, community-policing approach. ‘If we, as the Dutch police, believe this approach is important, that should also be reflected in police training’, Huyzer said. ‘And we all have to dare to face up to that, even if it’s extremely complicated and has all sorts of implications. But that is the route we have to take.’