In Amsterdam, many Romanians from criminal gangs were arrested for a while. Photo: ANP / Lex van Lieshout
Criminal gangs from abroad are increasingly involved in property crimes and especially thefts in the Netherlands. In 25 percent of last year’s property crimes, a suspect was involved who was not born in the Netherlands, who does not have a Dutch address and who does not have a Dutch nationality. What is very striking: the literally very dirty trick with which people are now being fooled…
This is all evident from previously unpublished police figures, viewed by the NPO Radio 1 program The Crime Bureau from broadcaster WNL. That ‘increasingly often’ was still 21 percent in 2021 and will be discussed on the radio tonight.
Gangs fond of GPS agricultural vehicles and E-bikes
More about the dirty trick later, first the police. ‘Uncle agent’ sees that there are a number of crimes that foreign gangs have mainly been involved with in the past year. It involves stealing GPS equipment from agricultural vehicles, pickpocketing and e-bike theft. “We now see fake frame number stickers that they stick over the real frame number and fake bills of lading. So if the police check them and don’t look any further, then everything matches and the papers seem to be in order,” says René Middag, coordinator of mobile banditry at the national police. The number of shoplifting and car theft is also on the rise.
Robbing gangs that travel through Europe in search of loot, the police are seeing it more and more. From 19h on @NPORadio1 Jill Bleiksloot speaks with René Afternoon of the @Police and with criminologist Dina Siegel van @UniUtrecht Sandra van den Heuvel delves into the figures and backgrounds pic.twitter.com/1h6oQoeIAO
— The Crime Bureau (@WNLCrime) July 7, 2023
The gangs that are active in our country come from different areas. Including from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and South America. According to Middag, it also concerns people who abuse the asylum procedure and thus commit these types of offenses throughout Europe.
Gangs use new trick with acid
“It mainly concerns criminal aliens from North Africa who come into the picture for such crimes. In general, we see that the proportion of criminal aliens is increasing. It has not been investigated whether this group actually resides or should reside in an asylum seekers centre.”
After consultation with Europol last week, the National Police is alert to burglaries with acid blowing over. “Several countries have indicated that they are troubled by itinerant gangs who use a special acid to ‘melt’ the locks of front doors, so that they can open the front door with a screwdriver,” says René Middag. As far as is known, this has not yet been observed in the Netherlands.
Too gross to be true
Middag also points to the ‘spit trick’, in which gangs spit in the hair of passers-by, help clean up, and then loot personal items. And there is a keen eye for fake cops who are active along the road. “They wave to foreign drivers with police passes and plates in their hands. They then stop neatly on the hard shoulder or at the highway and are then supposedly subject to a check. Subsequently, it turns out that cash has been stolen, or expensive equipment. They pick their victims, they are mainly car dealers.”
The Crime Bureau is all about criminal gangs on NPO Radio 1 tonight from 7 p.m.
Itinerant gangs steal like ravens and now use a (literally) dirty trick
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Itinerant gangs steal like ravens and now use a (literally) dirty trick
2023-07-07 11:58:38
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