"We definitely have the characteristics of a narco-state," confides Jan Struijs, chairman of the biggest Dutch police union.
The deadly shooting of Derk Wiersum destroyed a common misconception here: that drug cartels only kill their own. A 44-year-old father of two, he was shot dead in front of his wife outside their home in Amsterdam in September.
Wiersum was the lawyer for a crown prosecution witness, Nabil B, who had turned supergrass in a case against two of the Netherlands' most wanted suspects.
Even before Wiersum's murder, a report commissioned by the mayor or Amsterdam in August described the capital as a "Valhalla for drugs criminals".
Without firm intervention, he said, "you'll get a minister standing here in dark glasses rather that someone simply giving democratic accountability".
"We knew it was coming," Jan Struijs told me. "Lawyers, mayors, police officers - we've all been threatened by organised crime. All the alarms have been sounding but the politicians have been naive. Now it's rotting the concrete of our society."
One opinion poll suggested 59% of people believed the Netherlands was now a narco-state, in other words a country whose economy is dependent on the trade in illegal drugs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50821542
