te a bit.. nice, but not mandatory. You had to be big, tough and robust to join. The Dutch police were rough, and they handled the citizens even more harshly. Needless to say that they weren’t liked much.
1848, J. R. Thorbecke, a very important Dutch statesman, didn’t like them. Decent citizens knew where their responsibilities lay and would fill the state’s treasury anyway, he said. But not everyone agreed with him, and the police force grew bigger. Comparing the amounts; whereby 1815 only 52 ‘police’ were active in Amsterdam, 1844 counted 88,1856 had 23 inspectors and 96 agents, by 1877 303 and three years later Amsterdam counted 600.
In 1880, the world of Dutch citizens had changed too. Factories rose, and working conditions were unbearable. Workers protested, and this is a perfect example of what police calls; ‘disrupting public order. The police felt forced to intervene. To gain strength, national police officers and marechaussee joined their forces. The marechaussee’s horses were often deemed intimidating enough to prevent protests from happening. The tactic is still being employed to this day. A police apparatus formed around the same time. One that didn’t only bother with uprisings and misconduct, but legal knowledge, self-defence and First Aid too. And later, traffic policing was introduced, even though laws weren’t in place yet.
1901, who polices the police was raised by a liberal member of parliament H. Kist. Nothing changed much until WW1 when police training was introduced to be cancelled again only in a few years. The Amsterdam municipal police had three stations: one to combat counterfeit certificates, also known as the phoney money centre, which fought international criminals and investigated girls and women trafficking. In Rotterdam, located the smuggling of narcotics and car thefts. Amsterdam and Rotterdam were incredibly proud of those stations and their work against crime. They didn’t want to merge. Dutch police officers in training still learn about police collaboration from stories of those days.
One story goes like this: One day, somewhere around 1919, an English newspaper published an article about human trafficking. “Het ging in die dagen om de overtuiging van een levendige handel in blanke slavinnen.” (In those days it was about the conviction of a lively trade in white slave girls. [Google translate]) reads policeacademie.nl. This story is about white girls; imagine if they would have been people of colour or black. The victimized white girls’ story kept Europa busy for years and ultimately let a European force be formed with headquarters (IKPK) in Vienna. After WW2, IKPK was replaced by Interpol.
“International sex traffickers can also be empowered by poorly-thought-out prohibitionist police actions, which often involve deporting or incarcerating foreign women involved in sex work, a practice often driven by US policies.” writes Alex S. Vitale in his book The End of Policing about American policing. It is not so different from European policing.
In truth, sex workers are seldom in favour of the police, and these workers rarely see police intervention as being in their best interest. If only it’s because of the sex worker’s interest in maintaining their anonymity. Or the secrecy of/from their clients… Sure, in that case, the police would understand? Sadly, no, the police often see sex workers as offenders rather than victims. They fail to take the worker’s request for help seriously, regardless of whether sex work is voluntary or coerced.
* It’s broken Dutch, but it roughly translates: For anyone who demonstrates against slavery and racism: 1. First learn the history of the country you live in. Not only the part you think is important but everything. 2. Realize the times you live in…..thus the NOW or do you really live in the past? 3. You are against racism and slavery? Fine no problem with that…..are you also going to do something about slavery nowadays in which WHITE girls are misused as sex slaves? 4. You want the statues from your streets gone because it bothers you? Jeez, why did you come 