As far as I understood, the federal government would like to merge the police zones of Brussels. The local burgmeesters don't agree with that, and say that merging would mean lowering the effectiveness of police forces. To be honest, it seems to me that the effectiveness of the local police is already quite low but I may be biased by the media.

I read a couple of opinions on that subject and this for example cites a Criminology Professor who disagrees with the merger.

Do you have any opinion on this issue? Did you read any interesting point of view you'd like to share?

by de_kommaneuker

19 comments

  1. I wonder if in longer term we need a police structure where mayors do not steer police at all.

  2. we all know what happens with reforms in this country. They’ll create a new layer of management without suppressing the previous one, orders will get lost, a drama will happen and we’re already in 2050

  3. We don’t care, we just want criminals to get beat on, who cares where the cop clocks in.

  4. Er zijn verschillende voordelen voor de fusies van verschillende politiezones.

    Spijtig genoeg wordt er in België zo goed als alleen gekeken naar de besparing, tot op het punt dat er alleen maar nadelen voor de zones en de burgers overblijven.

    Er zijn absoluut dingen die groter/efficiënter aangepakt kunnen worden, echter ziet de politiek dit alleen maar als ‘hoe dun kunnen we dezelfde politieploegen smeren’.

    Dat ze maar eerst beginnen met de gemeenten te fusioneren, daar vindt je een pak meer overbodige postjes. Zorgt ook voor een hoop minder politiek gezever wanneer ze de politiezones willen fusioneren.

  5. Instead of investing in the federal police as it is urgently needed. They want to réforme something that noone involved will agree with. In practice nothing will never change. The population from zone Marlow is happy with their police zone, and font want to be involved in the problematisch of B-west for example. Complicated zones need an assistance from federal police, but this can not be guaranteed anymore because federal police doesnt have enough véhicules passing the control technique.

  6. Is it an issue in other countries and cities? For example does it impact the efficacy of the police in London, Paris or New York?

  8. Individual majors will lose power over the local police. Obviously they don’t want that. That’s not about what is best for their communities, but about their power, relevance and money.

    You see the same resistance to merging the municipalities to a single city (or at least fewer municipalities).

  9. ‘[Mayors] argue that inter-police zone collaboration in Brussels already works well’

    Yeah… if you’re from Auderghem and ever had your bike stolen in Ixelles and tried to track it to Schaerbeek, you know this is a blatant lie.

    ‘It is also logical that mayors are against anything that might make a dent in their power, and the centralisation of police forces would lead to just that’

    …And here we have the true reason for the opposition.

  10. I’m confident that we should definitely not listen to what the mayors of Brussels are saying. They seem like the embodiment of entrenched incompetence if we judge them by the territory they are responsible for.

  11. There are obviously pros & cons to both.

    **Merger of zones**

    * a single police force *could theoretically* lead to better coordination, resource sharing & de-duplication of administrative tasks
    * because of the urban landscape and the nature of crimes (who don’t adhere to police zones unfortunately), a unified force may respond more efficient to reported incidents
    * decision-making is more streamlined and provides a clearer command structure, reducing some of the bureaucratic hurdles

    **Against merger**

    * smaller police zones often have a (much) better understanding of specific neighborhoods and local communities which might aid in crime prevention
    * I assume the mayors are against a merger because they will lose their control on the police force, which in turn reduces the responsiveness to particular local concerns they might have
    * I’m not sure if police zones all operate in the same way so merging them might cause friction and increase the inefficiency (mainly at the start of the merger)

    I don’t have a very strong opinion toward one or the other. However if the existing police force is already deemed as being inefficient, without solving those inefficiency problems first, a merger might actually make things worse. I’m biased by the media obviously and there’s no news in highly efficient operating police forces.

    Perhaps a single command center for Brussels and keeping separate police forces is a solution? You get the benefits of a centralized incident coordination center to easily manage large scale events, emergencies and cross-zone incidents. It can act as a sort of *traffic control* and allocate resources there where they necessary at any given time. A streamlined approach of sharing crime data across the different zones and all operations are aligned, no matter the zone.

    Also includes a few challenges. Again, a single center for command might clash with local police chiefs and the chain of command and there might be cultural (way of working) types of resistance.

    As a final note a single command center might reduce costs over time however the required technological changes (probably?) might be a steep upfront investment. I recently came across a Youtube clip [https://youtu.be/Trr79TFSxG8](https://youtu.be/Trr79TFSxG8) about the police center of Antwerp. Impressive (and costly I assume) setup!

  12. A Lot of them are seeing a part of their power slipping away. That must hurt

  13. Mayor’s don’t want that system in order to not lose popularity to specific communities in their district…

    I’m sure some of them have ‘deals’ with specific players in their zone of influence, they don’t want strangers to look in their kitchen so to speak…

    Yes I am talking shady stuff

  14. There used to be 2 polices, the local municipal police and the Rijkswacht/Gendarmerie. Who remembers the time before 2001? After Dutroux and all the issues connected with it, they merged them. That was a good idea, as a lot of cases were basically doubles and they didn’t communicate that properly.

    So it’s been done before and on a much larger scale than in Bxl. It should not be such an issue to merge them.

  15. Most of the mayors are arguing that is a plan from flanders to weaken Bruxelles, give flemish more power and influence and is a first step to ask for future merges (CPAS, communes).

    They wonder why Bruxelles should suffer a political promise from flemish political parties while no one in Bruxelles is really asking for it and is even mostly against it.

    Some medias are telling about some studies showing that it would not improve anything. If you are really interested you could look for it I guess.

  16. If they need to create one big zone with a gold commander during new year, then I’m pretty sure it will be useful other days too…

  17. brussels is becoming a collection of feudal fiefdoms unless it is recentralised and governance is taken from corrupt locals

  18. I think it’s just smoke.

    They make a small reform that is easy but won’t bring much so that they can say they did something and feel they don’t need to make bigger reforms that are actually needed in Brussels but will be politically harder to make and accept and compromise on for some parties.

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