‘Klaas’ from Zwolle does everything right. His car has a handicapped parking card clearly visible under the window, valid and dated, and yet the police keep ticketing him for illegal parking in the lot in front of his house. Since April of this year he has received over 40 parking tickets with a combined worth of nearly 3,000 euro.

Rather than paying his tickets, he has decided to stick it to the man. He has been decorating his car with the tickets, and with drawings, post cards and a real pirate flag.

In an interview with newspaper De Stentor the man who wishes to remain anonymous—even though everybody in Zwolle probably knows who he is by now—explains how it all started: “The first guy who ticketed me treated my like a little dog. That’s when I turned my back on him. Since then the big boys have been coming over here daily to book me.”

“I own more than one car. As somebody confined to a wheel chair I like things on wheels. [...] I will have every ticket contested in court, one by one. That way the city will have to pay tons of court costs.”

The city of Zwolle responded to the newspaper, but considering they would have towed his car away after the third or so ticket if they actually were in the right, I don’t think printing their answer here is going to tell you much.

(Photo: Zaltbommel.nl)

A 29-year-old man from Bunschoten near Utrecht was fined 1000 euro for pinching a policewoman’s read end back in April. He was drunk, the cop told him to stop and he didn’t. The drunken man had to pay compensation for damages, as the woman was made the laughing stock of her department and was eventually transferred.

I admit to not taking two female cops seriously once because they didn’t exude any authority or understanding. I was double parked in Amsterdam unloading DJ gear where major construction (the Amsterdam metro) was literally blocking the entrance way to a building I had to get into. There was no other entrance way but a side door where I had to double park for about 10 minutes.

They told me I couldn’t, I said I knew, but I asked them what their solution was. They repeated you can’t, I asked again what their solution was, pointing to my gear and all. They stared at each other, I stared back with a smile and then they pissed off on their mountain bikes. Yes, it could have been two men, then I would have smiled more and been less smug.

In other news, if you’ve been living in a cave with terrorists, the Dutch football team is in the final for the World Cup.

(Link: reformatorischeomroep.nl)

At the height of a fight between a 22-year-old man from Leiden and a 31-year-old taxi driver in The Hague last week, the former jumped onto the bonnet of the vehicle. The taxi driver then got into his car, and drove to the police station with the 22-year-old still on it.

Charges were entered against both men when they arrived. On the way over, the man from Leiden also managed to punch the windscreen so hard it cracked, AD reports.

(Photo by Ben Fredericson, some rights reserved)

Meet Peter Smaardijk and Ilse Segers, twittering cops. These two police officers from Etten-Leur and Breda respectively have started posting about their beat from their Blackberries last week.

Together with two officers from Tilburg they will post tweets about their daily police life in order to be more accessible. The Noord Brabant police also hopes to increase its network of eyes and ears this way.

In practice, the four officers twitter both standard police announcements (“watch out for pick pockets”) and their day-to-day affairs (“Spent the rest of the night writing the report.”). The police recommend citizens do not to use Twitter to report a crime.

(Photo: Twitter.com / Politie Midden en West Brabant. Link: BN/De Stem.)

AT5 reports that seven fans of Amsterdam’s Ajax football club have been arrested for wearing shirts that sported the number 1312 before the match against Heracles last Sunday.

Police officers apparently were insulted by numbers, as they seem to believe the outcome of 1312 is “all cops are bastards.”

Football blog footballculture.nl—presumably fearing that if the police keep up their censoring ways, fans will have to go naked at this rate—came up with a completely innocuous T-shirt (photo) sporting an apple, some kind of citrus fruit, a member of the Ananas family, and a banana (Dutch names: appel, citroen, ananas, banaan).

See also:

• Man arrested for having insulting, tattooed abbreviation
• Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals (NRC)
• Police still required to fulfil ticket quota (RNW)

A particular dumb thief from The Hague was caught twice on the same day last Tuesday for stealing police bait bikes.

When the 35-year-old was released after the first arrest, he walked along the spot in the Wagenaarstraat in The Hague where his first crime had taken place, and, presumably to his great joy, discovered another bicycle just ready for the taking. This bike again turned out to be a bait bicycle.

Telegraaf doesn’t say if they also released the man after his second arrest.

An alderman from Oldenzaal in Twente got hit in the leg yesterday when a cannon went off near him. The third edition of the local New Year’s dive was to have been started by the alderman, Frits Rorink, firing the gun, but the device initially refused to go off. According to AD, swimmers had already taken to the water when the cannon fired after all.

Rorink was brought to a hospital where doctors diagnosed him with a broken fibula. His recovery is expected to take some time and multiple operations, according to Tubantia.

A 59-year-old man from Enschede was arrested on suspicion of a “possible connection” with the accident.

(Photo of the 2010 New Year’s dive of Scheveningen, in which so far no new models were discovered, by Alexander Fritze, some rights reserved.)

When Jan from Eerbeek, Gelderland noticed last Thursday that his extensive ecstasy collection had been stolen, he immediately notified the police. Even though it is believed that the collection is illegal, the 46-year-old sounded the alarm because he fears some of the pills may be poisonous.

The man started his collection 20 years ago. The last 10 years he has hardly worked on it, according to an article in De Stentor. The collector, who tried ecstasy once but didn’t like it, hopes for clemency from the Department of Justice.

“It is a great pity I lost the collection. I would have liked to preserve it for the ages.”

Ecstasy pills are often colourful and come in a great variety of prints. BoingBoing moderator Arkizzle explains the magnitude of the loss of the collection of 2,400 pills:

Pill marks in illicit drug manufacturing are lovely ephemeral things, that come and go as the brand is made and fades. Drugs, obviously, don’t tend to get saved for posterity, so this collection was probably unique. Also, I understand that owning the stamping dies is legally akin to having forgery plates, so they are unlikely to be reproducible.

I once saw a fantastic exhibition of acid blotters in London; original and reprints. Lots of ‘Dead-style artwork, amongst cartoon characters and repeating geometric shapes.

(Source photo: DEA. Link: Edmonton Sun / AP / Toby Sterling.)

Here’s a Web 2.0 plea that says ‘always update your intel’.

Yesterday in The Hague, the immigration police raided a hostel for mothers and children in the wee hours, suspecting it was being used by illegal immigrants (read = mostly men). The big scary screaming men busted down the front door, banged on bedroom doors and apparently freaked out little children.

“Junior justice minister Nebahat Albayrak, who was with the police on a fact-finding mission, witnessed events and helped comfort the children.” Why the cockup? Police used old information from the population registry. How stupid can you be? Some 20% of that information in every large Dutch city is false, everybody knows that.

This pic is the corner of my resident’s permit, as I thought the rushing bull was fitting.

(Link: dutchnews.nl)

The Dutch Union of Criminals — I kid you not — has complained to the national ombudsman that the police of Drenthe have violated a young burglar’s privacy by posting a video of the criminal at work.

A spokesperson for the Civil Committee against Injustice cried: “This is a joke, right?!”

Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet doesn’t give the union a snowball’s chance in hell: “The police have put the film online to track down the suspect, which is legal according to Article 22 of the Dutch copyright code, the part that deals with portrait rights.”

Family of the 88-year-old real victim had installed cameras in the home after she had been robbed a number of times.

A famous former member of the Union of Criminals is former justice minister Rita Verdonk. The union aims to protect prisoners, former prisoners and suspects against unfair practices of the state.

(Photo: a still from the video.)