Lower penalties than the OM had demanded for four Limburg former agents

Four Limburg police officers were convicted on Tuesday by the Zeeland-West-Brabant court for abuse of authority.

According to the court, the agents who worked in the Horst police team, Peel and Maas were guilty of, among other things, unlawful entering of a home and a search, the falsely drawing up of an official report, computer breaking and unlawfully entering a yard. These are criminal offenses that took place between 2017 and 2019. Two of the four agents have been sentenced to a community service sentence of 100 and 180 hours. A suspect has been sentenced to a prison sentence of 3 months and a community service sentence of 240 hours. The last agent was found guilty but has not been punished.

A police officer is to be expected that official reports will always be drawn up truthfully

The penalties are a lot lower than the requirements of the Public Prosecution Service. The public prosecutor demanded prison sentences last month for the agents who have now been fired. Research is according to the Public Prosecution Service it turned out that the suspects did not take it so closely with the rules for the Investigation of criminal offenses. They overwhelmed structurally-mostly non-Dutch-speaking-residents with a visit, searched their homes and did not record their findings or informed (auxiliary) officers incompletely so that they transferred to the issue of an authorization.