A neighborhood under siege after signals that cannabis cultivation is almost commonplace house to house, something like this is rarely seen. Residents of the Hoensbroek Kasteelbuurt didn't know what hit them when 250 police officers locked down their neighborhood.
"Right there, in the wooden shed behind our house." Sitting on a park fence in front of his childhood home on Markgravenstraat, he points to the spot where police troops found what they were looking for. Hemp plants, 17-year-oldAshley doesn't beat around the bush. "My father is already at the police station, so he had a nursery out back.Little did I know. I never heard anything about it before, but I'm rarely home either." That must have been an unpleasant surprise then? "Yes. You think you're sleeping in because you don't have to go to school until noon, you get this." A young neighbor's eyes spit fire as he watched the blue-tinted activity around the barn. "Everybody should just decide for themselves if they want a nursery in their house, right?" he fusses.
No, they found nothing on him, but they did find something on his sister-in-law, a few houses away. "A poor woman who couldn't do anything else. Because she cannot find a job and has nothing else. Now she is also the victim of this, while the state should give someone like that more money." 25-year-old Jan, who lives down the street, feels the same way. Dressed in stained fake brand clothing, unshaven and subway-dead eye, he pityingly stares at the ever-growing pile of plants on his neighbor's sidewalk. "Such a shame, they were almost high enough to harvest." It inspires him to propose a veritable bill of rights. "If the state would just allow every Dutchman to have a maximum of 100 plants at home, there would be a lot less crime.
"Neighborhood nearly collapsed network Enexis"
Then no one will have to rob anyone else for a tenner, either." Back to the reality of a bleak Tuesday in October.Ashley may take special interest from the police fifteen minutes after lamenting his sleep. After 15 minutes, he and his mother are whisked away in a justice van. He is not the only one. A total of eighteen residents of the Kasteelbuurt were arrested by the police.Other achievements: nineteen dismantled hemp plantations, the seizure of 6.5 kilos of amphetamine plus ingredients and the dismantling of an illegal café. It is the harvest of a massive operation that was put together in six weeks. "Getting 250 police officers on their feet within that time frame is quite a job, you only do something like that when serious calamities threaten," outlined Mayor Toine Gresel of Heerlen, who declared an emergency ordinance. "I would not have liked to have been responsible if a major fire had broken out here.Because that was a real risk: the power consumption in the neighborhood was so unprecedentedly high that it threatened to collapse the Enexis network."
'Proposal: everyone can have 100 plants'
And high power consumption in working-class neighborhoods often means only one thing: hemp plants in attics and barns. That conviction grew after heat measurements by the police, who flew a small plane equipped with special equipment over Hoensbroek. And then there were many dozens of reports to the click line Report Crime Anonymously. This resulted in the conclusion that 47 of the 128 households in the neighborhood were suspected of having a secret horticultural hobby. Impossible to dismiss with an ordinary hemp collection day, was the conviction of the judiciary, the police and the municipality of Heerlen. They knew it in the Kasteelbuurt. At a quarter to eight the entire neighborhood went on lockdown and 47 properties were knocked down simultaneously. Later that morning, while enjoying some heavy tobacco, the residents did not have a good word to say about the display of power: anger about 'kicking in my door while I have a five-week-old daughter in the house', indignation about 'a raid on my sick sister who is on life support inside' and irritation about 'that policeman who is even rummaging in my closet'. And then there is such a thing as the stigma of the neighborhood. "What do you think an employer will say when he sees that I come from a street where there was such an exaggerated action?" one young, unemployed father wonders.
The scale of the police action may be of Vinkenslag allure; the resistance of the residents is in no way reminiscent of the doggedness with which the Maastricht caravan camp residents defended their territory. The atmosphere is relaxed, residents talk quietly on the street and every now and then there is even time for a joke with the police. Perhaps not surprising, either, when you realize that the action was partly based on dozens of anonymous tips from the neighborhood itself. "See that roof over there across the street," points out a man who has lived in the neighborhood for years. "That was renewed after it burned out several years ago because of a misconnected plantation. Good thing dangerous situations are being addressed now." Concerned as he is about his windows, he does not want his name in the newspaper. However, this concern for each other's safety is not yet commonplace. Whether she is angry with the neighbors now that a potential fire in the shed there has been discovered, a resident is asked. "No," sounds almost surprised. "We didn't know, did we? And what you don't know won't hurt you." See, now Jan from Wingerdweg can talk to people like that. "Weed cultivation generates money that we spend again," he offers a microeconomic analysis as his ultimate argument. "At the pub for beer, at the V&D for clothes and at the Jumbo for groceries. Do these businesses sometimes need to go bankrupt?"
