Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated a couple of pieces about the growing likelihood that Dutch citizens, in the face of official failure, will act to protect themselves against violent cultural enrichment.

First, from Elsevier:

Natives threaten to address “inconveniences” themselves

“Natives are increasingly likely to intervene when there is trouble”

By Arne Hankel

The Dutch increasingly often threaten to address the misconduct of Moroccan youth themselves, and with violence. This is what District Chief of Police Ad Smit says, who heads the districts of Amsterdam East and Amsterdam Southeast.

C**t-Moroccans

Police Chief Ad Smit notices at the neighborhood meetings in Amsterdam East that many people talk about “C**t-Moroccans”. During disorders they threaten from the sidelines to intervene on their own. “If you’re not going to act now, we’ll do it ourselves, but differently, we’ll get the baseball bats out then,” according to Ad Smit.

Smit states that the police will in no way will accept natives taking the law into their own hands.

Hard approach

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According to him this can be prevented by taking a hard line on the troublemakers [i.e. the Moroccans]. “Early this year I informed the police leadership [in the Netherlands that is the unelected mayor and the chief commissioner] that the response by the natives to Moroccans is becoming increasingly more intense, and something needs to be done. Well, since then we have taken significant action. We have arrested dozens of those [Moroccan] robbers.

“And now we have paid extra attention — especially our neighborhood directors [police officers stationed for a number of years in a specific neighborhood] — to whether it was getting out of hand with those natives.”

That did help, says Smit. “If you take away the problem, you see their reactions also fading,” according to the Amsterdam police officer about the anger of the natives.

From an interview with Ad Smit in newspaper De Pers :

It [the response by natives] is limited to grumbling and cursing?

“So far it is. You must take it seriously, though. Show them that you are not going to take their side when it comes to that kind of wording. And that you will act against them when it goes too far. The minute the hands start fluttering, when things are going to be collectively organized against certain population groups, then it will go wrong, and then I will intervene. When I, as police chief, know that one group is organizing against another, I will pick them up.

“As long as the responsibility is mine, I will resist tooth and nail against taking the law into one’s own hands. It is an incredibly dangerous issue. I find it too easy that in times when things are going a bit badly — and in these times there are people who are not doing too well, and are somewhat in trouble — you are going to give vent to rage against others. Halfway through the last century we had a very bad example of that.”

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.