The COPS-unit in Ghent

In 2024, COPS, the elite team of police zone Ghent, was deployed several times against non-violent activists. Once to remove pro-Palestinian activists from the rectorate of UGent and once against forest occupiers in the Wondelgem Meersen. Especially in the latter eviction, they took a heavy-handed approach. The COPS unit is normally only deployed against the most serious forms of crime.

For this reason, they have access to more specialised weapons, such as tasers and rubber bullets, and are allowed to use more coercive techniques. Professors and experts worry that the unit is now increasingly being used for interventions against activists. As a result, the line between counterterrorism - one of the units' main tasks - and interventions against activists sometimes becomes very thin.

When resources developed in the war on terror are increasingly used during everyday interventions against activists, this compromises the proportionality and subsidiarity principle of the police. Professors stress that the police should primarily adopt a facilitating role vis-à-vis protesters, as the right to protest is constitutionally enshrined. Exactly how often the unit is deployed against activists is not clear, as COPS communicates little or nothing about its operation.