self how much impact this has on racial disparities in traffic stops or scenarios, as sketched above. How many implicit and explicit biases remain, even after targeted and intensive training? I don’t accuse officers of being intentionally racist; although this can be true, I doubt the training work because institutional pressures remain intact.
Diversifying the workplace is often seen as another ‘solution’ to the problem of racial profiling, but even the most diverse forces have major problems with it. In America, for example, “…individual black and Latino officers appear to perform very much like their white counterparts.” notes Vitale on page 17 of The End of Policing. And the Dutch Employee Monitor (2016) showed that half of all agents who describe themselves as ‘immigrants’ experience discrimination at work, which often causes them to quit their job. I guess that racial profiling and excessive use of force are often done by a small group of officers, who tend to be male, young and working in high-crime areas. They may find themselves in a culture of machismo that rewards this aggressive policing, formally ánd informally. The police have a special status that comes with the special power of being the sole legitimate users of force, and this too adds to the mindset of “them against us”. The institution’s ultimate purpose of the police has always been that of managing the poor and non-white, rather than generating equity and fair play.
“There’s No Justice; There’s Just Us”Reni Eddo-Lodge, title of the last chapter of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (2017)
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Now imagine that the white powder from our example story was indeed real drugs. The Opium Act prohibits the possession, trade, sale, transportation, manufacture, etc., of the substances covered by the law. Use by itself is not a criminal offence. The Opium Act consists of two lists in the Netherlands. The first describes hard drugs—cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamine, LSD, and heroin. The second depicts soft drugs; hash, weed and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Typically, possession of hard drugs and soft drugs for personal use is not a legitimate reason for prosecution. If the boy carried less than 5 grams of soft drugs (hash or weed) and/or a maximum of 0,5 grams of hard drugs (cocaine, speed etc.), 1 XTC pill and 5 ml GHB or less, the Dutch police could have taken it, he wouldn’t be fined. His name would be logged, but he wouldn’t get a criminal record. Decriminalization doesn’t increase drug use.
Drug use is a problem of health rather than criminal justice. I’d argue that it would be better to legalize it all and then regulate the purity of the drug’s potency. Drugs are associated with criminals, gangs and ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. A common thought of many Dutchies is to stop and wonder why a Caribbean or Moroccan- looking boy wears expensive clothing brands or drives a flashy car… we punish and search and him instead of his white friends. He’s stopped by the police.
18 June 2020, Dutch police officers use their guns 0,029 times a year on average. Some never use their weapons during their career, whereas others use them twice a year or more. They used it today. A disturbed man walked around in Eindhoven (NL) with a large knife. He allegedly threatened bypassers. A cop felt so threatened that he shot the man in the leg. The man stood on his own, on a large square. He stood still and slowly turned around after warning shots. He didn’t let go of his knife, thus shooting him was allowed. A shot in the leg can be perilous, deadly even. The officers weren’t even near a life-threatening situation at the shooting time; the distance was too big.
All anomalies, especially the mentally ill, are often seen as a dangerous source of disorder controlled by aggressive policing. Yelling a command and/or displaying weapons often escalate and destabilize encounters and cause a (mentally ill) person to flee or become more aggressive. However, it still is the standard police approach. Even alternative methods to the command-and-control practice migh