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| Beware of lying cops setting up checkpoints here. Ijburg |
As the terror threat increases to astronomical levels here in the Low Countries, with Belgium dispensing iodine pills to its entire population for fear of an imminent dirty bomb attack, the Dutch police have recently begun ramping up the number of checkpoints they set up outside of popular supermarket chains such as Albert Heijn.
Most of the checkpoints established outside of the Albert Heijns here in the Netherlands are targeted at immigrants, where they can often be approached just for looking out of place in this largely Aryan society.
If you see Dutch cops outside of the Albert Heijn, they will most likely try to pull you over, even if for a minor bicycle infraction, such as failure to turn on your bike lights after a certain hour. You may be asked to pay a small fine. If, however, you don't have your ID on you at the time, you can expect to be taken to the police station until your identity is confirmed. But sometimes you get a nice cop who will just ask you your name, date of birth, place of birth, and if you're registered with City Hall at an address.
Should you happen not to be registered with City Hall, as all undocumented are, then you can expect the police to begin treating you like a suspected illegal alien, which they are legally obligated to report to the foreign police. At the moment that a Dutch police officer outside of the Albert Heijn begins asking you questions, you are now legally considered a suspect, and you can lie to the police without fear of perjury, so it's probably in your best interest to not say where you are staying, but to tell the police that you're simply traveling through, that you're on your way out the country that same night, that your friend is picking you up and he has your ID.
They will try and use strong-arm tactics right there outside of the Albert Heijn, putting pressure on you to get you to confess as to where you live, and they may even try and follow you, but you have to hold firm in knowing that you can lie to the Dutch police if you're a suspect, and you should also be certain that even if they're smiling and being friendly, that their only objective is to deport you and raid your home to see if there are more immigrants living there. Remember, they can legally lie to you and about you, and they will, so don't feel bad telling a Dutch policeman a blatant falsehood.
If you don't have the skills necessary to lie to the Dutch police outside of the Albert Heijn, and you actually tell them where you are staying, they will most likely tell you that they are letting you go with a warning, as was the case with one of our writers who was not too long ago pulled over outside of the Albert Heijn and subsequently lied to before his home was invaded by six heavily-armed foreign cops looking for illegal Dominicans.
Our writer is the US citizen son a Dutch citizen who has had legal status under her here in EU for nearly a decade, but he was born in the Dominican Republic, and for a cop outside of the Albert Heijn, it doesn't matter if you're a rich Yale graduate, what matters is that you're brown and born in a poor country; a Dutch police officer does not possess the capacity to see you as anything but a brown untermensch from a poor country. A brown man from a poor country in the Netherlands can expect the same treatment given to Haitians in the Dominican Republic, if not worse.
Our writer is the US citizen son a Dutch citizen who has had legal status under her here in EU for nearly a decade, but he was born in the Dominican Republic, and for a cop outside of the Albert Heijn, it doesn't matter if you're a rich Yale graduate, what matters is that you're brown and born in a poor country; a Dutch police officer does not possess the capacity to see you as anything but a brown untermensch from a poor country. A brown man from a poor country in the Netherlands can expect the same treatment given to Haitians in the Dominican Republic, if not worse.
If you're an undocumented immigrant in the Netherlands, or if you have guests that plan to stay in your apartment for longer than a month, it may be wise to avoid the Albert Heijn at night, unless you want your neighbors to see you getting dragged out of your apartment for making the mistake of thinking you were living in a tolerant land.
