Police in Rotterdam, Netherlands will reportedly start tackling crime by literally undressing people in the streets.
Rotterdam Police Chief Frank Paauw told De Telegraaf about a new program that Dutch police say will be a way to reduce crime. Under the new program, police will be on the lookout for people wearing clothing that looks too expensive for them to own.
The police will then question that person, and if they can’t explain themselves as to wear they got their clothes or where the money came from, those clothes will be confiscated.
“We know they have clothes that are too expensive to wear with the money they get,” a spokesperson for the department said, according to Quartz Media. “We’re going to look at how they get those clothes, where did they buy them, from where the money came that they buy them.”
Questionable legality
The Dutch police will be working in conjunction with the public prosecution department to figure out what they can legally confiscate. But even with the waters as murky as they are, the police say that they will still take the clothes.
“We’re going to undress them on the street,” Paauw said.
The department spokesperson added that police would be looking specifically for “big Rolex[es], Gucci jackets, all those kinds of clothes.”
Critics of the new plan have blasted it as a thinly-veiled approach to racial profiling.
“Police won’t consider a white guy walking around in an expensive jacket to be a potential drug dealer,” Quincy, a 20-year-old resident of Rotterdam told Vice. “But it’ll be a different story with minorities.”
Previously, De Telegraaf reported, Dutch police looked at cars as signs of possible criminal activity. But now, with police literally stripping people of their clothes for looking too poor, the relationship between the police and the communities they’re supposed to serve may never recover.
And in the meantime, poor kids will be targeted for public humiliation.