The sheeple's rise to power vs the best customer service in the world

Z

zeppos

Joined
Mar 3, 2006
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I read the following story in a dutch newspaper:

In Amsterdam (which used to be europes equivalent of the home of the free) in the Netherlands, country of our beloved neighbours, a guy has been arrested for carrying a simple SAK. He was on a picknick with his son.
Result: knife confiscated + court case.

He wrote a letter to Victorinox, explaining what has happened to him. Mr Elsener offered him a new knife and promised to send some top class lawyers to defend him in court.

How's that for customer service?!

And what about the Netherlands having legal shops to buy drugs, but arresting a dad who wants to prepare his son's meal with a pocket knife?

Common sense becomes a thing of the past... (or isn't it? if sheeple make up the majority, their sense becomes the common one, i guess...)
 
Maybe it is just me, but what seems to make sense is becoming less and less common. That is great customer service though. Thanks for sharing that story.
 
jackknife said:
And yet another fine example of the inmates running the asylum!:eek:
Click to expand...

Amen to that JK!

This is so sad that I have a hard time not laughing at it. It's beyond me to even try and figure out where logic like that comes from.

I use the word "logic" very, VERY loosley;)
 
world has gone insane with controlling our lives-media makes a bad situation look 1 million times worse than it is,the political retards keep it growing and in the end we all lose our rights
 
A new use for the Case cotton jack at the headshops over there?

Seriously, top notch CS from Victorinox. BS from the Netherlands.
 
The more I read this, the more I wonder if 1. This is a real story, and 2. Is there more to it than reported?

This seems sickeningly sheepish even by liberal European standards!

Part of me finds it just too incredulous that somebody could get arrested for a sak. Or maybe part of me refuses to believe that people anywhere could let their govenment get this tyranical, not to mention draconian. Last I heard the Netherlands was a free country with a voting populace. If so, how could any free people let their government get this far out of wack?
 
This sounds funny to me too. Can you post a link to the article?

I live in The Netherlands (Groningen), though I am American. I was just up to my local hardware store a few weeks ago and they had a nice broad assortment of knives - SAK's but also German sodbusters and a big variety of folding tactical types. I've also checked with my friends and to their knowledge a typical 3" size blade is no problem.

For personal reasons if nothing else, I would like to get to the bottom of this and see what is going on. At least so I don't start cleaning my fingernails in frotnt of a policeman or something.
 
The more I read this, the more I wonder if 1. This is a real story, and 2. Is there more to it than reported?

This seems sickeningly sheepish even by liberal European standards!
Click to expand...

Ditto. Probably the result of some egomaniac cop...

-Bob
 
All it takes is one hysterical ninny to shout, "Knife! He's got a knife!" and the situation immediately spins out of anyone's control. I'll bet the same thing could happen (or has already happened) in the US under the right circumstances. Oh wait, look at what's happened with our "zero tolerance" policies in schools...

-- Sam
 
In Amsterdam (which used to be europes equivalent of the home of the free) in the Netherlands, country of our beloved neighbours, a guy has been arrested for carrying a simple SAK. He was on a picknick with his son.
Result: knife confiscated + court case.
Click to expand...

I suppose if he, his son, and a prostitute were at the picnic smoking hash together without a SAK, it would have been OK.

Odd.
 
This is the link to the article. Most of y'all dont read Dutch i guess (a good chance dkronholm does), and i must admit The Telegraaf qualitywise isn't the Dutch equivalent of The Times, but it's (one of) the biggest national newspaper(s) still. And it should at least have some truth in it. (and even it's only part of the truth, it's still shocking.)

http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/62229531/Zakmes_gezin_is_verboden_wapen.html

I haven't got the time today, but if i have some tomorrow, i'll try and translate the whole article.

I found out something more about the incident, from posters on our Dutch/Belgian equivalent of Bladeforums:
The dutch police has the right to choose certain area's which they consider high risk. They are alowed to search everyone in that perimeter and confiscate everything they consider to be dangerous. And they are supposed to treat everyone in the same way. If you're a thug or a dad out picknicking, that doesn't matter.
 
He wrote a letter to Victorinox, explaining what has happened to him. Mr Elsener offered him a new knife and promised to send some top class lawyers to defend him in court.
Click to expand...

Very sad story and what was the impact of this on the man's son?? On the other hand three cheers for Mr.Elsner :thumbup: I may have to pick up a Victorinox just because of this..:)

Sunburst
 
It's all part of the mania governments have for inventing MORE LAWS and creating new crimes to swell the pockets of lawyers and create a police-state mind-set. Less laws or minimal laws equals better security and freedom.
 
Some perspective.

The guy was searched during a routine check on one of A'Dam worst streets. (Zeedijk). Several years ago the police has adopted a new protocol for these kind of searches and just stuck to their protocol. (like Zeppos explaoined) (Shouldn't they?) Anyway, I'll bet my Victornix Farmer he won't get convicted. The only interesting part of the story is the customer service part. Anyway, there is nothing to see here, surely not something worth to bash the Netherlands for. Please move along.

Edit: Perhaps I should clarify why the dutch police considered it inappropiate to carry a SAK on the Zeedijk. For years, that area has been considered a 'no-go' area. One of the few, if not the only one in the Netherlands. Due to good work from the local community, city council etc. it's much better now.
We have pretty liberal knife laws in the Netherlands, but the police can consider any knife inappropiate in a certain setting, and thus consider it a weapon. For example, don't carry your 4" "tactical" folder to a night club. A 4" "tactical" folder is perfectly legal when hiking in the bush, but not when you should be dancing ;). I hope this clarifies things a bit.

Ted
 
Ted,

If things sounded as if i wanted to bash the dutchie, then i'm sorry, but that wasn't the case (however i must admit that being Belgian i'm a little biased ;) ).
I didn't know of the "particular status" of the Zeedijk. The last time i visited Amsterdam was in 1982. I was five and i had a jolly good time.

It probably could just as well have happened in Belgium, to be honest. Over the past years some knife related incidents with a deadly ending have ocurred in our little country and the authorities are overreacting seriously.
A couple of weeks a female fan of Buffy the Vampire slayer was convicted and fined heavily for mail ordering replica dagger from the series, which she wanted to ad to her buffy collection. Luckily the cops stopped her, before she started slaying our friendly Belgian Vampires...)
 
I guess that explains it. I had heard before about the Dutch law with respect to the location (I won't carry in a bar).
 
Okay, now my question. If they guy was on one of the worse streets in Amsterdam, is that the kind of place a guy would be at having a picnic with his son?
 
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