I like watching people, and Amsterdam is a great place for it. There are only about 4 homeless people in Amsterdam from what I could tell. One such is a guy who hangs out in the Leidseplein are, by Max Euwplein. His name is Kenny. I was people watching and spotted one of the homeless, a guy with a spirited expression, obviously drunk, who never wears shoes. I have seen Kenny many times and his feet are gross. Imagine if you were homeless and never wore shoes. Your feet would become like Kenny's: leathery, swollen, built up for the harsh cold streets like a hermit in the woods who cares not about his appearance.

So on this one occasion I saw Kenny sitting in a doorway, and there was two police officers speaking to him, a man and a woman. When I see cops in America deal with homeless people, the officers behave with open contempt for the homeless they are sending packing. The police rarely arrest the homeless, because after a brief psychological examination they will be released back on the streets because they are not quite disturbed enough for our government to help out.

On the contrary, the Dutch socialist system is pretty good at keeping the homeless off the streets. I don't understand the exact reason, but homelessness is not a big problem in Holland. Also, these two Amsterdam police officers seemed that they were in no rush to deal with Kenny. I was fully expecting them to make Kenny get up and move along, but instead he sat in a doorway and told the cops an animated story complete with hand gestures and all. I kept watching this go on for almost 20 minutes; then I looked up and the cops were gone. Kenny was still sitting in the doorway, and I was amazed. The police were taking their time and now they were gone.

I was intrigued, so I managed to find the two cops a few blocks away. I caught up with them and asked them if they had a minute to answer my questions about the homeless guy. I have never dealt with nicer cops than these two. There are certainly more hard-ass cops out there in Amsterdam, but these were almost kids. The guy looked like he got stoned himself, and had an earring. The woman was quite pretty, and like Bhuddism. I learned this and a great deal more by talking with them for about twenty minutes until they got a call and had to leave.

They told me that Kenny's name was Kenny, and that he was one of a few homeless who refuses help when it is offered. Kenny apparently was once a family man before his drinking destroyed that and he started living on the streets. He is an intelligent person who is just a little crazy, but he knows his rights and knows what to say to the cops so they can't take him in for examination.

POLICE GET SABBATICALS FOR EACH CHILD

Another interesting thing I learned is that if you are a police officer in Amsterdam, you will receive 6 months paid leave for every child you have. You can take this anytime before the child is 8 years old. This affords the officers the chance to spend some extra focused time with the child sometime while they are still a little kid. The Dutch are much more family oriented than Americans.

When we got to the subject of drug laws, they explained much of what went into the Real Story on Coffeeshops section.