The mayor now wants to talk to the police in particular about the enforceability of such a ban in that specific neighborhood. For example, he mentions the risk of a ‘leakage effect’ if there is a prohibition in one neighborhood and not in another.
Destruction cameras: two tons of damage
Given the threatening atmosphere, they were in Breda-Noord during the New Year additional agents and the Mobile Unit engaged to be able to appease. The destruction of five mobile cameras in the district alone caused the city a two-tonne damage. No reason for the mayor of Breda to argue for a ban on fireworks in his city.
“I don’t want 95 percent of the municipality of Breda to bleed for the five percent that goes wrong,” he says. The mayor also indicated that a general fireworks ban had been discussed in the city council before the turn of the year and a majority of the council was not in favor of that.
‘Put an egg in The Hague’
Depla also calls on politicians in The Hague on Sunday to “lay an egg” on whether or not fireworks should be prohibited. “As long as politicians from The Hague do not make a choice, you should not expect that choices can be made at a local level,” he says. How enforceable is it that fireworks may be lit in one neighborhood and not in another, he wonders. And that is precisely what Depla wants to talk to the police about.
For the mayor of Breda it was already the fifth turn of the year that he experienced in this position. Whether it gets worse in terms of fireworks? “It is shifting,” he says. “But there in Breda-Noord, Hoge Vucht, it was the worst thing I experienced.”
View the conversation with mayor Paul Depla of Breda in KRAAK here.
