When discussing the little differences between the US and Europe in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) tells fellow gangster Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) that ‘if you get stopped by a cop in Amsterdam, it’s illegal for them to search you. I mean, that’s a right the cops in Amsterdam don’t have.’ Tarantino, who briefly lived in Amsterdam in 1992, was evidently well acquainted with one of the city’s attractions to those interested in buying or selling things that remained illegal elsewhere.

A small and increasingly troublesome group appears to be becoming more heavily armed – and younger

A small and increasingly troublesome group appears to be becoming more heavily armed – and younger

In an influential 1977 Dutch court case known as the ‘Hollende kleurling’ (‘running black man’), two police officers stopped and searched a black man they had seen running from an Amsterdam café known to them as a meeting place for drug users and dealers. He kept one hand in his pocket. Although the man resisted and even bit one of the officers, their suspicion was correct: he was found to be carrying heroin. But the court ruled that his race, his running, the location and the hand in his pocket did not provide sufficient grounds for a search. The search was consequently ruled unlawful, the evidence – the heroin ­– excluded and the man acquitted.

Tarantino’s Vincent Vega, back in those good old 1990s, was talking about drugs. Today Dutch police have something rather more troublesome on their minds: guns. And, more specifically, when and whom they may........

© The Spectator