Councillors in The Hague are questioning the reliability of a report into potential ethnic profiling by the city’s police after claims that it was manipulated, the AD said on Friday.

The report, by Leiden University, was published in 2014 and concluded there was no evidence the city’s police structurally carried out checks on people on the basis of their ethnicity.

However, independent research group Buro Jansen & Janssen has raised questions about the independence of the report. It has used freedom of information legislation to obtain minutes of meetings between police chiefs and university chiefs which indicate the research may have been manipulated.

In one note from December 2011, it states: ‘One risk could be that it focuses attention on [potential] discrimination by the police.’

Risks

‘The risk has been discussed with professor [Joanne] van der Leun. She understands that this is undesirable and has said that she… will specifically discuss this point with the students and will keep an eye on it during discussion about the theses as they are being worked on.’

The final report was based on theses written by two master’s students at Leiden, although this is not mentioned in the report itself, Jansen & Janssen says.

Councillors from the anti-Islam PVV and left-wing green party GroenLinks say the claims must be cleared up as quickly as possible. Police have denied the claims that they have influenced the results.

Reforms

Last year The Hague police chiefs said they were introducing quotas and setting up special work experience schemes in an effort to encourage more people with an ethnic minority background to sign up.

In addition, the police will do more to explain to people why they are carrying out stop and search procedures and will take the registration of discrimination complaints more seriously, mayor Jozias van Aartsen said.

The Hague’s local force came under fire last summer for the heavy-handed way an Antillean holidaymaker was arrested. He died later in hospital. The death led to riots in Schilderswijk and other parts of the city, as well as complaints about the ‘daily reality’ of ‘racist police violence’.