Police deployment on Museumplein costs 5.5 million for 10 weeks | Inland

Since 17 January, the police had to act eleven times on the square in the capital, where hundreds of people gathered for demonstrations and coffee-drink campaigns of ‘The Netherlands in resistance, get rid of this cabinet’.

At the expense of neighborhood

The costs for the large-scale police deployment are not extra expenses, but, according to the spokesperson, are only at the expense of other police work. “The work that someone does at the mobile unit or the arrest unit is a sideline. Logically, this commitment comes at the expense of something else, for example work in the neighborhood, in the basic teams, emergency aid, or work on police investigations.

The costs are calculated on the basis of the number of police officers deployed and how many hours they are at work. Last weekend had a price tag of about 1.4 million euros. Then it came to a clash with the police on both Saturday and Sunday, and more than two hundred people were arrested.

From Groningen to Limburg

During the past ten weeks, the Amsterdam police received help from the military police and all other units in the Netherlands on Museumplein. “All units from all over the country are being asked for assistance, and they are delivering it. Help came from the north of the Netherlands to Limburg. It must be, if this takes place every Sunday, ”said a police spokesperson.

For ten consecutive weekends, hundreds of people came to Museumplein to protest against the government in general and the corona measures in particular. Because people do not comply with the corona rules, and do not leave after several warnings, the police intervenes. That happens with the riot police, water cannons and police horses and dogs.

’Hooligans’

The police was criticized by Amnesty International, among others, for the disproportionate police violence, in which, among other things, a demonstrator was beaten and bitten by a dog while it was already bleeding on the ground. However, the police say that it is also hard for them to choose.

“Most of the people standing there are against the government measures. We also see birds of various backgrounds. There are so-called ‘flower power types’, but we have also seen extreme right-wing groups and hard cores of various football clubs. The latter do not make themselves known as such there, but we do know them from this scene. And people come from all over the country. ”

The police also sometimes find weapons during a preventive search. “There is a few who come with a weapon. That concerns a very small part of the group ”, said the spokesman.

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