As several perpetrators of recent shootings in Brussels have increasingly been using e-scooters to escape, Etterbeek Mayor Vincent De Wolf (MR) is proposing a night-time ban on these flexible shared mobility vehicles.
In early February, a shooting took place in the Marolles area in which two people were injured. The perpetrators fled on scooters. According to recent police reports, the use of scooters in crime is not an isolated incident, De Wolf told La Dernière Heure.
"It is a flexible means of transport, it is fast and you can go anywhere," he said. Therefore, he proposes to ban the use of scooters from 23:00 to 06:00 as one of the measures to make it harder for criminals to get away.
Implementing across Brussels
"A ban at night would certainly make it harder to escape. It could be the subject of a trial for a month, for example," De Wolf said. He already discussed the plan with the chief of the Montgomery police zone and will put it on the table of the Conference of Mayors. Now the Regional Security Council is looking into the proposal.
"This type of measure only makes sense if it is applied across the board," he said, meaning there is no question of only implementing it in Etterbeek. "We could also, for example, restrict ourselves to hotspots."
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However, the proposal so far does not have unanimous approval from Brussels' 18 other mayors. The mayor of Anderlecht, Fabrice Cumps (PS) is sceptical of the plan and told Bruzz it was "a step too far" for him.
"Combining regional measures with local initiatives is the way forward. And restricting scooters should remain a local measure," he added. In Anderlecht's Peterbos district, for example, a speed limit already applies. "There are no scooters that go faster than 10 km/h there. That way, drug criminals can no longer flee from the police with an e-scooter."
