Pocket knife confiscated? Discover your rights!

Questioner

Best Legal Aid Clinic Can the police confiscate a regular pocket knife during a preventive check? As far as I know, you are allowed to have a regular pocket knife with you on the street. I was not given the opportunity to pick it up later or to leave the 'risk area' with my pocket knife. I also do not receive any compensation for this. The police told me that it was a regulation by the mayor, but can the mayor just order that legal things be confiscated on the street? Would the mayor also be allowed to order that, for example, all teapots must be confiscated and destroyed?

Lawyer

First of all: I am not a lawyer, just an interested reader. You are allowed to have a pocket knife with you, but not just anywhere. There are indeed risk areas where such a knife can be confiscated. See for example here: http://www.vraaghetdepolitie.nl/sf.mcgi?222 In addition, it is indeed quite possible that a mayor decrees that all teapots must be confiscated if there is reason to do so. If it is customary in a village to bash each other's brains in with a teapot because of some strange custom, then the mayor can theoretically prohibit this in an emergency ordinance, see this article on Wikipedia: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodverordening In practice, that will never happen, but it can. That it depends on the location in which a knife is found is also no more than logical. I assume that you yourself would not feel comfortable if everyone in the pub on a Saturday night had a pocket knife with them.

Questioner

Thanks for your answer. About the location: I was just on the street, to be precise right inside the canals in Groningen in the a-kwartier. There is indeed a regulation here; but I wonder if this is also an emergency regulation (if I look at that wikipedia page it seems to be for very special cases). The pocket knife was somewhere in my bag; so not ready to be pulled or anything like that. I wonder if they are allowed to confiscate anything during this preventive frisking or if they have to specifically look at the 'risk' that something poses. For me it was very clear that I did not carry this pocket knife in my backpack with me to commit violence with it, but just to be able to peel an apple whenever I feel like it.