TV review | Catch thieves? The police officer has become a care provider

I am not always a fan of Ewout Genemans’ programs. He has quite a nose for sensation and likes to express that preference widely on TV. But to be fair, his series about the Dutch police is fascinating and insightful. Yes, there is a bit of sensation, but you can hardly blame him on this subject. He previously followed agents during their work in Amsterdam and Eindhoven, The Hague and Arnhem. The program is called this season Bureau Rotterdam and it is broadcast on Tuesdays on RTL4 and can be seen on Videoland. He followed Rotterdam police duos for more than six months. His own role remains modest. He follows what is happening from a distance, as far as that is possible in all the commotion. He gets involved sporadically and afterwards he does a kind of debriefing of the officers.

In one Friday evening shift, chief officers Brian and Keashia calm down an angry man on the Nieuwe Binnenweg, settle a fight between two men in the night shelter and rush to a fight between two women at a McDonald’s metro station. They talk to people who are shouting, they smell if there is alcohol involved, they check if there are more weapons than fists and shoes. And in the meantime, they try to make chocolate out of what one party accuses the other of and make a decision at once. The angry man is sent away, the homeless man who bit his neighbor’s ear is taken to the police station, one fighting woman is arrested for fighting, the other gets a ticket for public drunkenness. In fact, everyone the police officers responded to that evening was under the influence, whether it was alcohol or something else.

What you at Bureau Rotterdam see, you read extensively in NRC last week. Police officers from all eleven units in the Netherlands said that they could no longer handle the “work supply”. An unintentionally funny way of saying they’re way too busy. They were too concerned with “incidents”, had “too few eyes and ears in the neighborhoods” and were forced to let criminals walk away. One comment from police chief Wilbert Paulissen of the North Brabant Unit stuck with me: “We shoot confused people more often than criminals.”

Combining walking and peeing

The man with his genitals out of his pants, who officers Robin and Anouk find in broad daylight. Is that a criminal? Of course not. He is an older, somewhat confused man who combined walking and urinating. Will you pick that up? No, because where do you put him? Those two men in the park, surrounded by not one duo, but three police duos, plus two ambulance nurses. Crooks? That’s what it sounded like. The report concerned a ‘cut open neck’. The man appears to have been hit on the head with a bottle by a ‘friend’. They had an argument. He sits, bleeding and furious, tearing bills in half. It takes eight people to bandage his head. And then? Then nothing. There is no reason for an arrest, and he is also too drunk to report the crime. The man making a fuss in the supermarket also keeps six police officers from doing their jobs. Officer Nadia accepts his threats, insults and spit splatter and orders him to the other side of the street. So, says her colleague Joyce when he is finally out of sight. “I’d rather catch a real crook.”

The same Nadia and Joyce come across a scooter across the road. Son was driving, father was on the back and he is now in creases. The officers staunch his wounds. The son gets an “angry official conversation.” He is drunk, but doesn’t have to go to the station. “It’s a shame to keep him now,” says Joyce. “You have to remain human.” And practical too.

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