Hello, I hope this is the right place to come. We contacted the Dutch govt. but they said to call the non-emergency German line (and we will, probably, we’re both just hesitant about the language barrier lol). But we had a weird experience the other day.
Just after we crossed from NL to Germany at Bad Nieuweschans, the bus stopped and two guys got on. They had a sign that looked [like this](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR5cZrDW3ELt7aoWhwl0BJ7KSCC0V8XyR8eMdbfHh8chuk9joPIf_M4J9bhJGO_B3E1P-g&usqp=CAU), but it didn’t say POLIZEI, just “halt”. They were not wearing uniforms and didn’t show ID (we definitely should have asked), but they came up and said “Douane”. We asked if they speak Dutch, they said they spoke English. They asked for our passports, and what we were doing in Germany, if we have anything to declare, if we smoke. One guy took our IDs and went to make a phone call, while the other guy was chatting and laughing with the bus driver. We heard the first guy reading out the numbers of our IDs to whoever was on the phone. Eventually they came back, gave us our IDs and left. The car they went back to was not a police or Douane car, just a regular black one by the side of the road.
It’s perfectly feasible this is a normal thing to happen but the lack of uniform and ID has left a weird feeling. I don’t know what kind of scam could be committed with just a person’s identity card number and there are probably easier ways to get it than waiting for the occasional unaware person crossing the border (we were the only ones in the bus). But I wanted to ask here if someone knows about these sort of plain-clothes Douane checks on the Dutch-German borders. Thanks in advance!
by Luke300524
4 comments
When someone stops you for a control, and you don’t see their badge on their uniform, you ask for it. Applies all the way from the ticket controller on the train to the police.
Normal at the border. Police/Customs dressed in civilian clothes patrol the border crossings.
Mostly looking for smugglers, currently on a manhunt:
https://nltimes.nl/2024/02/14/police-urgently-seeking-psychotic-prisoner-escaped-groningen-institution
I think police can show up in plain clothes, however they should identify yourselves to you if they want to arrest you or confiscate your property or something like that.
In any case usually intimidation is what gives fake-policemen away, real policemen don’t need to intimidate you.
I doubt they were fake. Simply because the Dutch-German border area is heavily policed, and anybody who pretends to be police/customs runs a very high risk that real police will catch them in the act of illicitly stopping cars crossing the border.