Hundreds of Belgian cops protest against officer’s arrest after boy killed in chase

BRUSSELS — Hundreds of police officers protested Friday at the Palace of Justice over the arrest of a cop relating to the death of an 11-year-old boy.  

Around 300 officers crowded Place Poelaert, Belgian broadcaster VRT reported, including members of the force from police zones around Brussels and Antwerp, to demonstrate against the officer’s detention.

The arrest has sparked fury from police unions, as tension simmers among law enforcement and the local community after the death of 11-year-old Fabian, who died in Elisabeth Park in northwestern Brussels after a police chase in early June. 

According to the prosecutor, an investigation provisionally indicated that the officer gave chase without switching on a blue light or siren, and that the vehicle was driven into the park — which is not accessible to cars — at a speed of more than 40 kilometers per hour. 

“Nobody wanted little Fabian to die. People sometimes forget that we are also mothers and fathers,” Police Chief Michel Goovaerts told a local radio station Friday.

“They may have been careless, but that arrest was a big surprise,” he added. “The feeling among colleagues is: This could have happened to me, too.”

Earlier in the day, hundreds of protesters against police violence crowded the same location near the Palace of Justice.

They were protesting the death in a Brussels prison cell in January 2023 of Sourour Abouda, a 46-year-old woman of Algerian descent who suffered a medical episode; as well as the death of Fabian, whose family is from Moldova.

The Brussels Council Chamber considered Friday whether to prosecute the police over Abouda’s death, but her case was postponed after both the police and the family requested further investigation, without a new date being set.

“Sourour, Fabian: We don’t forget, we don’t forgive,” and “Who protects us from the police?” the protesters’ signs read.