The Netherlands Police Academy wants to be accessible for/to LHBTIQ+ community

The entire month of June was Pride month, a month where special attention is given to the position and acceptance of the LHBTIQ+ community. The Netherlands Police Academy pays attention to this group in various ways.

“At the Netherlands Police Academy, we consider it important that the police are approachable for persons who, for instance, are victims of incidents that are related to sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Aart de Zeeuw, Police for Everyone programme manager at the Netherlands Police Academy. “Basic police training contains several assignments in which the LHBTIQ+ community takes centre stage. We teach students to find out more about the community, for instance with the aid of terminology: what do the individual letters in LHBTIQ+ actually stand for?

The police want to have a good relationship with this group

“On the one hand to get more information from this group. To gain more insight into what is important to them. But we also want to reach out and connect to show victims of discrimination and violence that they can file a report. It appears that the threshold for doing this is presently still too high in some cases,” according to Aart.

Pink in Blue in police education

Another assignment students are given involves inviting Pink in Blue colleagues to give a guest lecture. Pink in Blue is the police network for the LHBTIQ+ community. Lecturer Harry Schoonbrood promotes this network at the Netherlands Police Academy. “For Pink in Blue, the Netherlands Police Academy is a sort of breeding ground,” says Harry. “After graduation, the Pink in Blue students start working for this network in the police units. During the lectures we explain what Pink in Blue stands for. 

But we also address, for instance, how to take down a statement from victims from this group; sometimes it is necessary to ask very specific questions. In addition, you must fill in a specific code when drawing up the official report, so that colleagues who read it can see that the incident involved violence or discrimination against a member of this specific group.”

Police students at the various Pride events

During the Pride month, Harry, together with students, attended several Pride events, for instance in Utrecht and Eindhoven. “I am sometimes asked whether the police should really participate in these events in uniform. We feel we should. We know how low the willingness to report incidents is among this target group.

During the Pride Walk the other day in Eindhoven, I already noticed that people found it easier to reach out to us there. I talked to a man who had been threatened himself. Fortunately, this had led to a court case ending with a proper sentence for the perpetrators.  You see that cases do actually end up in court, as long as people are not afraid to file a report. We hope that Pink in Blue will help people overcome their fear.”