It seems that you don’t need to commit a crime to be stopped and stripped by Dutch police. They will strip pedestrians that wear flashy designer clothes if the officer thinks the individual could not afford them.
The Dutch must have invented some kind of super-perceptional technique and installed it into the brains of its police since Rotterdam police officers will now be allowed to undress a pedestrian if they think that the clothes they wear are too expensive for their “looks.” Or, as a Rotterdam police department spokesperson told reporters “We know they have clothes that are too expensive to wear with the money they get. We’re going to look at how they get those clothes, where did they buy them, from where the money came that they buy them.”
Chief of Rotterdam Police Frank Paaw told reporters “We’re going to undress them on the street.” He also commented that one of the frustrating things about young criminals is when they wear expensive and flashy clothes and walk about as if they are untouchable. We know they committed a crime, but we cannot prove it. However, he thinks that he can prove some criminal intent when a person wears clothes that they could obviously not afford to buy with their current employment status.
So, if you are young, living in Rotterdam and happen to like expensive looking clothes, beware, you might end up walking home naked! Actually, it will not be that extreme, since the police department will be working with the public prosecution department to determine what can be confiscated. Clothes will only be confiscated when the “culprit” cannot explain how they got their clothes, and the police do not mean where they bought them, but how they could afford to buy them in the first place. They will also be targeting specific individuals and not the general population, focusing on the local youth that police suspect is involved in criminal activity.
A police spokesperson told reporters that the police would not be targeting all youth, but only concentrating on the gangs that in constant “drug wars” around the city. In most cases, the youngster in question will be known as a gang member and on a police watch list.
What stands out against this activity are three important core factors of liberal life:
1. It assumes that someone is a criminal based on looks
2. It focuses on minority groups that are part of a racial profile
3. It can lead to other reasons to enforce police brutality on suspects
One youngster stated that police officers would not be bothered with a young white Dutch boy wearing the most expensive clothes and driving a flashy car, but throw in a 20-year-old African, Asian or Middle Eastern looking individual, and they will be all over him.
