The picture above is not a designer dyde being arrested but is a picture taken and put up on Flickr by photographer Leo Roubos of 7 police officers detaining a suspect on a Rotterdam street
If there is going to be a return to the Met Police expanding controversial ” stop and search ” of mainly black youths in London to combat rising knife crime – this is nothing compared to an initiative planned by police chiefs in Rotterdam to tackle suspected drug dealers.
The Dutch police are planning to stop and search young people wearing designer gear in the city if they will decide they are too poor to be kitted out in Gucci jackets. If they don’t believe they should be wearing them, they are going to confiscate them on the spot.
Frank Paauw, chief of Rotterdam police, is reported to have told De Telegraaf ( in Dutch). ” We are going to undress them in the street”.
“These young people have no income, sometimes even debts from a previous conviction, but also wear an outfit that exceeds 1500 euros. That is undermining the rule of law if you make it very big, but also a completely false signal to local residents. Taking away is therefore important, “says Paauw.
Police will be on the lookout for include “big Rolex[es], Gucci jackets, all those kinds of clothes,” the department spokesperson said. One wonders what would happen if they are wearing Calvin Klein boxer shorts.
Not surprisingly people have slammed the idea because it could lead to racial profiling. The Netherlands version of the website Vice contains some particularly strong criticism after Vice spoke with young people in Rotterdam.
“Police won’t consider a white guy walking around in an expensive jacket to be a potential drug dealer,” said Quincy, a 20-year-old man. “But it’ll be a different story with minorities.”
It strikes me if you happen to be black or from other minorities Rotterdam might not be the best place to go for a weekend trip.
More disturbingly what would happen if this type of action caught on. In an era when the new Tory vice chairman for youth,Ben Bradley, the 28 year old MP for Mansfield, in his youth called for more ” police brutality”, and vasectomies for men on the dole, you never know what will happen.
Perhaps he might suggest it as a new manifesto policy to attract young voters to the Tories or to attract former ” law and order ” UKIP voters back into the fold. The only disadvantage forthe latter is that it is happening in Europe.
Frankly to me it seems a very daft and dangerous idea – yet another move to raise racial tensions and stereotyping black youth – rather similar to police stopping an Afro Caribbean just because he is driving a sports car or an expensive 4×4.