Mayors Parkstad and Vaals together to hearing in The Hague

22-01-2024, 12:00

Crucial RBP hearing in The Hague

The 7 municipalities of Parkstad and Vaals filed an appeal against the Regional Police Policy Plan (RBP) with the Ministry of Justice and Security at the end of July 2023. With this appeal, they are sounding the alarm about the sharp decrease in police capacity that the RBP would mean for this region. The hearing on the matter will take place today, Monday, January 22, 2024, in The Hague. Mayor Wever of Heerlen, Mayor Dassen of Kerkrade, Mayor De Boer of Landgraaf, Mayor Houben of Voerendaal, Mayor Geurts of Beekdaelen, Mayor Scheepers of Simpelveld, Mayor Van der Rijt of Brunssum and Mayor Leunessen of Vaals left together this morning for the Ministry of Justice and Security in the court city to make their plea.

"An appeal with 8 mayors together, you really don't just do that. It is a cry for help supported by hard facts that we want to make heard in The Hague. There is already such a shortage of police officers that normal police tasks can no longer be properly carried out. Further reduction would endanger the safety of our citizens," said Mayor Roel Wever (Heerlen), also speaking on behalf of the other mayors of the Parkstad municipalities and the municipality of Vaals.

Disbalance

That the Limburg unit's police force is under pressure is nothing new. For years, there has been an imbalance between the appeal that Limburg citizens make to the police and the capacity available to meet this demand. In the current times when the connection with society is under pressure, neighborhood policemen are deployed to continue providing 24/7 emergency assistance. As a result, they are too limitedly deployable for their original task: the first point of contact in the neighborhood, a core value of the police in Limburg. Mayor Wever: "Limburg is elongated and has an excellent infrastructure. This in combination with the fact that there are a number of medium-sized cities but relatively also a lot of rural areas makes the province an important international logistical hotspot; not only for tourism where Limburg ranks^2nd in the Netherlands, but also for criminals who make clever use of the differences between laws and regulations in the Euregion in particular. Not for nothing are four Limburg municipalities in the top 10 of the crime meter and 5 Limburg municipalities in the top 10 of the RTL undermining map."

Hearing

Both the mayors who filed appeals and the Regional Mayor and Chief Public Prosecutor will today be given the opportunity by Minister Yesilgöz to explain their appeals orally. The plea of the mayors of Parkstad and Vaals will point (among other things) to the fact that the workload study on which the RBP is based does not give an accurate picture of the police workload and is therefore inappropriate for the reallocation of police capacity.

Therefore, according to the mayors, the RBP cannot be implemented and the decision to adopt it should not have been taken. The date of the hearing decision is not yet known.