BRUSSLES: Belgian police officers have collectively phoned in sick in a protest about a shortage of staff and overstretched resources caused by the state of emergency introduced after the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.
Officers in Molenbeek, the suburb in the capital linked to many of the terrorists who carried out the attacks that killed 162 people in November 2015 and last March, failed to turn up on Thursday night and yesterday morning.
Police from other districts had to be drafted in to cover for colleagues as the security crackdown, including street patrols by the army, entered its 14th month. “They are talking about an overload of work, which I can understand. Things have not been easy either in 2015 nor in 2016,”.
