aybe you've heard that Amsterdam is an extremely safe city, that you can walk anywhere unmolested at any time of night. For me that's been true so far: no one has threatened, attacked or robbed me in Amsterdam (at least not that I've noticed). But I'm lucky that way. Big trouble tends to elude me. Knock on baksteen.
There is crime here. Including violent crime, hate crime, gang crime, and organized crime.
Hits happen. Someone on a passing motorcycle takes out an automatic weapon and guns down a couple in a parked car in Amstelveen. The male victim is allegedly an organized crime figure. The perpetrator is spoorloos verdwenen (tracelessly vanished). A real estate dealer gets shot down outside his office on the Amstelveense Weg, not long after having a talk with the police. Again the perp is spoorloos verdwenen. In broad daylight at the corner of the Dam and Rokin, a Dutch guy walks up to a Bulgarian guy and shoots him dead. The dead man is rumored to be some sort of drug baron. His girlfriend, a young Bulgarian fashion model, is badly injured but survives. This time the perp isn't so spoorloos, the cops catch up to him in a café in de Pijp. One night on the Singel near the flower market, somebody puts 19 bullets through the windows of the editorial offices of Quote magazine, apparently because of something they wrote about a guy having shady connections. Stuff like this happens every few months, and the scary thing is that of course you can't see it coming. That guy ahead of you with the suit and expensive shoes may be a CEO, or he may be mob. But hit men are not after you. Normally the innocent casualties are limited to those who have the misfortune of sitting next to the target.
In a city where a lot of people get drunk or wasted, it's not too rare for anger to escalate into violence. I'm riding tram 1 through Surinameplein and look out the window to see some guy getting knocked down and kicked twice in the head before he passes out. A friend of mine bumps into three guys at the Burger King on Reguliersbreestraat, says the wrong thing, and gets the shit kicked out of him. The police show up, but simply choose not to intervene because the victim is still fairly ambulatory. The assailants eat their cheeseburgers in peace. There are occasional bar brawls in town, and reports of a steekpartij (knife party) in some outlying neighborhood where somebody somehow pissed somebody off. Some of this stuff you can avoid just by walking away from situations where you sense bad energy rising. If you can avoid insulting someone's dignity, you may avoid becoming the target.
Then there are those times when you are the target — just a random target of opportunity. A friend of mine is using the money machine at Rembrandtplein so he can go pay his bar tab at Mulligan's before they close. Some guy steps up behind him and puts a knife to his chest, and gets away with ten euros. The bar tab doesn't get paid that night, cuz that's the last ten euros my friend has in the bank.
One early October afternoon, a bunch of teenage supermarket employees come storming out of the Dirk van den Broek in de Pijp, reportedly shouting "wij gaan klappen!" (we're gonna hit). They chase down a German junky named Anja Joos, and accuse her of shoplifting a can of beer and some dog food. Along the way, the workers are joined by some of their pals. Joos shows them her receipt, and all is about to be forgotten. But then, as the story goes, she makes the mistake of addressing her accusers as "kut-marokkanen" (cunt-Moroccans) — at which point she is beaten to death in the street. Over the following few days people lay candles on the spot. A memorial service is held for her at the church most frequented by drug addicts.
Again when you have any kind of emergency you're supposed to dial 112. I wish I could say something nice, but people who've done this tell me the police are not blazingly responsive when you call them. Depending on where you are it may take them a while to show up, and when they do, they may not appear very potent to do anything. 
I dunno if it's fair, but there is a prevailing sense that the police would rather avoid trouble than tangle with it. One longtime resident I know thinks the Amsterdam police "make much better social workers than enforcers. They're very good at diffusing situations. But they know they don't really have the support of the Justice department, so very often they can't intervene."
One thing worth understanding about the Netherlands is that law and justice are characterized by discretionary prosecution. The authorities may do something, but are not obliged to — especially if doing anything would seem to make matters worse. There is no requirement that everything should make sense. A degree of wigglosity is engineered into the structure of the universe, yielding a rich, aromatic blend of order and chaos. That's why some things that are not exactly legal are still permitted here, unless somebody has a reason to give you trouble. That's why coffeeshops are technically allowed to sell dope, but not to buy it. That's why my lawyer could describe the immigration policies as "strict and vague" at the same time.
That prevailing dubbelzinnigheid (double-mindedness), according to Geert Mak, is responsible for the widespead perception that Nederlanders are "tolerant." You've heard that a lot, haven't you. Well plenty of people are tolerant, dammit. But others just aren't sure what the heck to do. They don't wanna do the wrong thing, so they end up looking tolerant. And when somebody decides they are no longer going to tolerate, but will risk actually doing something, then they are likely to become heroes, or convicts.
Despite recurring blips of crime and aggression, Amsterdammers do say they feel more safe nowadays. For the most part, the bad shit that happens is overarched by a prevailing sense of civilization. Just watch out for pickpockets.
