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- Feb 19, 2012
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In the Netherlands, a police officer was convicted to 100 of community service and he has to pay the victim 2000 euro in damages.
The officer who was patrolling the streets on his motorcycle had been warned that (at night) that there had been a burglary in the local area and that the perpetrators had been seen leaving the scene on a dark motor scooter. When the officer saw a red scooter driving with a driver who was not wearing a helmet (even though most likely he was supposed to wear one), he wanted to stop the scooter to check whether or not they were involved in the burglary, the scooter did not stop and sped away. The officer drove on his motorcycle after the scooter and pushed against handle bar which caused the scooter and it's driver to crash.
Because the victim was not wearing a helmet, he broke his cheekbone, upper jawbone, orbital socket and his occipital bone. Which were serious injuries to his head.
The officer was charged with attempted manslaughter/attempt to serious battery with serious physical injuries/illegally causing serious physical injury by culpable guilt.
The court said that while it did not believe the officer had planned or wanted to cause the serious injuries that were caused by his actions, he is still guilty of causing serious injury through culpable guilt and thus he was going to get sentenced to work punishment and he has to pay his victim 2000 euro's. The punishment could have been higher but the justices where the opinion that the highly likely detrimental consequences this conviction will have for his police career, meant that they thought that in combination with the work (100 hours) and the money he has to pay, that was enough of a punishment.
The reason why he was guilty of a crime was threefold:
1. the police does not train this kind of highly dangerous techniques because:
2. the law stipulates which violent (potentially violent) actions police officers may use (like shoot, pepperspray, taser use, using police dogs, tear gas, ramming a car, etc. etc. etc. etc) and what the officer had done, push on the steering wheel to cause a crash, is not a legal tactic of violence that the police is approved to use. And if the law does not say something is OK to do, the police may not use such a tactic.
3. at the moment the officer used this highly dangerous technique, the only 2 things the person was guilty of, was not wearing a helmet and failure to stop. Now if he had been a murderer on the run than maybe such a tactic would have been appropriate to the risk the officer took with the health and possibly live of the scooter driver but that was not the case and thus because of these three things, the judges found him guilty of a crime and convicted him for that crime.
I think it is a good thing that police officers, who have in our country are the only ones who by law (on our streets) to use violent means to do their jobs, know what can and cannot be done by a police officer to stop a suspect and in which situations extreme measures can be considered (and a traffic violation, the the opinion of the judges was not a situation in which possibly lethal measures were legal to be taken).
The officer who was patrolling the streets on his motorcycle had been warned that (at night) that there had been a burglary in the local area and that the perpetrators had been seen leaving the scene on a dark motor scooter. When the officer saw a red scooter driving with a driver who was not wearing a helmet (even though most likely he was supposed to wear one), he wanted to stop the scooter to check whether or not they were involved in the burglary, the scooter did not stop and sped away. The officer drove on his motorcycle after the scooter and pushed against handle bar which caused the scooter and it's driver to crash.
Because the victim was not wearing a helmet, he broke his cheekbone, upper jawbone, orbital socket and his occipital bone. Which were serious injuries to his head.
The officer was charged with attempted manslaughter/attempt to serious battery with serious physical injuries/illegally causing serious physical injury by culpable guilt.
The court said that while it did not believe the officer had planned or wanted to cause the serious injuries that were caused by his actions, he is still guilty of causing serious injury through culpable guilt and thus he was going to get sentenced to work punishment and he has to pay his victim 2000 euro's. The punishment could have been higher but the justices where the opinion that the highly likely detrimental consequences this conviction will have for his police career, meant that they thought that in combination with the work (100 hours) and the money he has to pay, that was enough of a punishment.
The reason why he was guilty of a crime was threefold:
1. the police does not train this kind of highly dangerous techniques because:
2. the law stipulates which violent (potentially violent) actions police officers may use (like shoot, pepperspray, taser use, using police dogs, tear gas, ramming a car, etc. etc. etc. etc) and what the officer had done, push on the steering wheel to cause a crash, is not a legal tactic of violence that the police is approved to use. And if the law does not say something is OK to do, the police may not use such a tactic.
3. at the moment the officer used this highly dangerous technique, the only 2 things the person was guilty of, was not wearing a helmet and failure to stop. Now if he had been a murderer on the run than maybe such a tactic would have been appropriate to the risk the officer took with the health and possibly live of the scooter driver but that was not the case and thus because of these three things, the judges found him guilty of a crime and convicted him for that crime.
I think it is a good thing that police officers, who have in our country are the only ones who by law (on our streets) to use violent means to do their jobs, know what can and cannot be done by a police officer to stop a suspect and in which situations extreme measures can be considered (and a traffic violation, the the opinion of the judges was not a situation in which possibly lethal measures were legal to be taken).