Cyprian Broekhuis (23) shot dead by officers during a forced admission on Wagenaarstraat

Cyprian Broekhuis — 'Cyp' to his parents — was 23 years old and had schizophrenia. He was the only child of the visual artist Robert Broekhuis and the paramedic Nan Romijn: a withdrawn boy who wrote poems and made pen drawings. After his first psychosis in 2012 came years of intakes, waiting lists and changing clinicians — his parents counted thirty-five. In March 2016 he had to leave his supported-housing place at Parkrand and ended up temporarily in a one-room flat on Wagenaarstraat in Amsterdam-Oost, where he kept the curtains shut and barely went outside. Two days before his death Cyp became angry when his regular support worker raised the subject of legal guardianship, and said he would put a knife in his back if he did not leave. On 7 September 2016 the care team decided on an involuntary committal. When Cyp did not open the door that afternoon, his support worker feared suicide and came back an hour later with police assistance. Four officers were told at the door about the threat two days earlier, and that the young man had until then only ever been verbally aggressive. With a key from the care team, seven people walked into the dim room. Cyp was lying on the bed in his sleeping bag. He looked up groggily, sat on the edge and pulled on his trousers; he seemed absent, not threatening. The officers said nothing and moved a pair of scissors, a small knife and a set square out of reach. It grew tenser when the support worker brought up the threat and Cyp said he did not want care. Two workers told him he would be committed against his will and walked to the back room. At that point the officer at the foot of the bed said he wanted to search him. Cyp jumped up: “We're not doing that. You may not touch me.” Six shots were fired. He died in hospital. Accounts of those seconds diverge. The two officers who fired stated that Cyp pulled a knife from his trouser pocket and pointed it at one of them; one of them spoke of mortal fear. The two officers who did not fire also said they had seen a knife. Of the three mental-health workers in the flat, none saw a knife. One of them heard an officer say, “I thought he was pulling a knife”, and saw the senior officer throw a round black object backwards onto the floor. The Rijksrecherche, the national investigation department, interviewed the mental-health workers within an hour, but the two officers who had fired only after two days — contrary to the 24-hour guideline — and those two had already held an internal evaluation before being questioned. The first search, lasting nine hours, turned up no knife. Only the next day, after a tip from an officer involved, did two objects turn up side by side under the sofa in the back room: a survival knife and a black round torch. In early March 2017 the Public Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute the officers: they had fired in self-defence. The parents appealed through an article 12 procedure — every patient being committed should arrive at the clinic safely, was their position. Their lawyer Wieteke Drummen: “Knife or no knife, the possibility of a cover-up should have been prevented.” On 4 April 2018 the court of appeal declared the complaint unfounded. On the television programme Zembla, experts later concluded that it was never investigated whether the officers had mistaken a torch for a knife.