In Belgium it is a criminal offence to 'insult' a police officer, they call it "Smaad aan de politie" in Dutch/Flemish. I know because I got a verbalisation once and I didn't need to say a lot to get it. Thankfully I didn't need to go to court and got a criminal record that way.
I once lived next to a guy who drank a lot and who assaulted his older daughter when he drank too much. We had thin wales so we heard the scuffles and the cries. We always called the police but they didn't do anything about the situation. To be honest Belgian justice is a joke, in a lot of cases involving violence they never prosecute anybody.
After I while I got really fed-up after the x number of times the police came and did really nothing than telling the guy to be quit.. . I made - not saying that I was correct - remark that being a police officer in Belgium must really been the most pointless job you could do. Drive your bike without a light and you get fined, hitting your children and you get a free pass. That - and that alone - was enough to get verbalised.
Same in NL, but people go around it by making it an opinion instead of a direct insult, then it becomes freedom of speech. As in, instead of saying "You're a dick", you go "I think you're a dick". Subtle, but apparently enough.
I have heard plenty of people insult police officers in public and even spit at them in the Netherlands without them doing anything. I learnt in school it is illegal to do so, I have never seen any of them do anything about it in real life. Even without the subtleties; quite the opposite.
Police officers have constantly crown prosecutors (or their assistants) on the line and these are the people who really call the shots on whom to arrest and how to proceed whenever something's getting serious. Going by the description, dad/daughter affair should have definitely been referred to Tribunal de la Jeunesse and I bet it was. Belgian prisons are also overcrowded and justice system understaffed so that prosecuting small one-time offenses is definitely not a priority.
I once lived next to a guy who drank a lot and who assaulted his older daughter when he drank too much. We had thin wales so we heard the scuffles and the cries. We always called the police but they didn't do anything about the situation. To be honest Belgian justice is a joke, in a lot of cases involving violence they never prosecute anybody.
After I while I got really fed-up after the x number of times the police came and did really nothing than telling the guy to be quit.. . I made - not saying that I was correct - remark that being a police officer in Belgium must really been the most pointless job you could do. Drive your bike without a light and you get fined, hitting your children and you get a free pass. That - and that alone - was enough to get verbalised.