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.)

German police destroyed a marijuana field in Ruhrauen near Duisburg after they were tipped by a passer-by that it smelled “just like Amsterdam” there, writes Der Westen (German).

When the police checked out the nearby water protection area, they discovered and impounded 47 plants with a sum weight of 117 kilos. The plants were chopped up by city employees for “easier transportation” and further processing.

(Photo by Eric Caballero, some rights reserved.)

Last Sunday the Utrecht police caught a 37-year-old thief who had stolen two car radios.

Witnesses had spotted the man breaking into a car and called the police, who had no trouble whatsoever taking over the thief’s low-speed microcar to stop and arrest him, reports Telegraaf (Dutch). The article doesn’t tell whether the man was actually disabled or whether he merely used an invalid car as a decoy. Still, I am sure there is a lesson in there somewhere.

Those with reduced mobility often use a microcar to get around in the Netherlands. These cars are typically rated as mopeds, and cannot go faster than 40 kilometres an hour. A popular brand is the Canta.

(Image based on a public domain icon from the US FHWA Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.)

Two and a half years ago Dénis van Vliet was fined 170 euro for wearing a T-shirt that read ‘corrupt’, with the ‘o’ logo of the Dutch police. He fought the fine in court and the winner is… the police.

Van Vliet was stopped by two policemen who were offended by the T-shirt. Van Vliet’s lawyer argued that there are many ways to intepret the T-shirt and that if the police are so easily offended, it goes to show how little power they actually exude. (The Dutch police ‘just talk’ to people who do ‘bad things’ and come off like nice old ladies scolding a puppy for peeing on the carpet.)

Oddly enough in a similar case, someone wore a T-shirt that read ‘poep’ (’shit’), with the police ‘o’ logo and the courts dismissed it.

In court, the lawyer pulled out a baseball cap and T-shirt worn by the bomb squad with the words ‘kort lontje’ (’short fuse’), saying that the cops can laugh at their own jokes, but not at other people’s.

I’m waiting for a list of things we can and can’t have on a T-shirt, so we can add that to the war on fun being waged in the Netherlands.

(Link: revu.nl, Photo shirtjes.nu)

Last Wednesday a car thief in The Hague was in the possession of 10,000 euro without even knowing it, reports Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch). The man, a known offender, was addressed on the Broekslootkade by two passing cops who just wanted to have a chat. In response he bolted, leaving behind a purse which he had, as it later turned out, stolen from a car a day earlier together with a navigation system. The purse contained 10,000 euro in cash, unknown to the 36-year old thief.

(Photo of the arrest of a Rotterdam bicycle thief by Flickr user Hellobo, some rights reserved. The police officers are the ones wearing dark trousers.)

Patent lawyer Arnout Engelfriet says (Dutch) that searches of mobile phones and laptops at the airports by the marechaussee, a form of military police, may be illegal. He refers to the fact that the powers of the marechaussee are the same as those of the regular police, and regular police may only perform searches when they have good reason to suspect a specific wrongdoing. The marechaussee’s actions are part of a test started last year in the hope to lessen the smuggling of child pornography.

According to tech news site Tweakers.net (Dutch), the justice department wanted to keep the test a secret because of expected “legal complications.” Journalist Brenno de Winter discovered that although 900 mobile phones, 62 hard disks and sundry other digital devices were searched, none of the victims were prosecuted on the basis of these searches.

The marechaussee was installed in 1814 by later king Willem I as a successor to Napoleon’s reviled gendarmerie. Its tasks have included policing of citizens from the word go. When the civil police reorganized in 1988, guard and police duties at national airport Schiphol got assigned to the marechaussee. The organization took over guard duties for the royal familie in 1908, a job hitherto performed by the palace’s gardening staff.

(Photo: colargol87, some rights reserved.)

- “Officer, officer! You have to arrest my neighbour, Mr De Vries.”
- “What has he done wrong this time, Mrs Jansen?”
- “He’s whistling dirty songs!”

The following news made me think of this old Max Tailleur (Dutch) joke:

A man in Groningen was arrested last week for wearing an insulting tattoo, according to Dagblad van het Noorden (Dutch). Written on the man’s neck were the letters ACAB, and the police assumed this abbreviation stood for All Cops Are Bastards. Some mothers do ‘ave ‘em, eh? The man first stated that he had his neck tattooed after spending some time in jail, and later added that the abbreviation meant “acht cola, acht bier” (eight colas, eight beers).

Insulting a civil servant, including police officers, is a crime in the Netherlands (article 267 of the criminal code).

Photo: montage.

Update: another man got convicted in February for wearing a jacket with the text A.C.A.B. The court had a rather curious opinion (Dutch), in which it held that the number of Google hits that linked to page in which ACAB was used as All Cops Are Bastards was evidence of the popularity of the term.