The Public Prosecution Service demands 60 hours of community service against a 39-year-old officer from the Rotterdam Unit, who is suspected of committing perjury. The man drafted a report that was demonstrably incorrect. The officer reported this himself.
The man was involved with colleagues in the preventive search of seven individuals at a garage. When the garage owner attempted to evade this, the officer wanted to arrest him. In doing so, the officer headbutted the garage owner. He wrote that he was grabbed by the garage owner and that the headbutt was necessary to break free.
Camera footage
However, camera footage of the incident shows that there was no grabbing involved. According to the Public Prosecution Service, the facts and the report are so far apart that there can be no question of a mistake or a different perception by the officer.
Previous prosecutions
In this case, it is relevant that the officer has previously been prosecuted by the Public Prosecution Service Rotterdam for the headbutt. The magistrate imposed a fine on him for this. The garage owner was also prosecuted for resisting arrest, based on the report drafted by the officer. When the garage owner submitted the camera footage, the judge concluded that the officers report was deliberately made in contradiction to the truth and the Public Prosecution Service was declared inadmissible. Subsequently, the Public Prosecution Service opened a Rijksrecherche investigation into perjury.
Trustworthy
The Public Prosecution Service considers it serious that the officer has betrayed trust by deliberately falsifying an official report. The report of an officer must be trustworthy, as it forms the basis of every criminal case. “In doing so, he has not only harmed himself but also the reputation and trust in the police as a whole.”
Demand
As a rule, a prison sentence is demanded for drafting a perjured report, but the Public Prosecution Service does not do so in this case. It has been five years since the incident occurred. It is not the officers fault that it has taken so long, and the Public Prosecution Service could and should have addressed this case more swiftly. Additionally, the officer himself reported to his supervisor that his report did not match the camera footage. Finally, it weighs in that he has already had to bear the consequences of the attention for this case for all these years and that he has already stood before the judge for giving the headbutt.
The court will issue its ruling in two weeks.