Illegally parked police van goes viral

Images showing a police chief advocating strict sanctions for illegally parked vehicles while standing in front of a wrongly parked police van have gone viral. Philip Pirard, police commissioner for the Hasselt, Zonhoven and Diepenbeek zone says the footage from TV Limburg could be misleading. In Monday’s programme, Pirard preached harsher punishment for illegally parked vehicles, but throughout the interview, a police van could be seen parked on the pavement in the background. The images quickly became the subject of ridicule on Facebook and Twitter. “I regret the unfortunate timing and will take the appropriate action against the driver of the police vehicle,” Pirard said. “It sometimes happens that police vehicles have to park temporarily on the pavement to guarantee the privacy of suspects being brought in. For now it is not clear whether this was the case on Monday. That should be revealed by an internal investigation.”