give them arms… so what do you expect

the war with illegal VCD pedlers had been going on for quite some time. now and then raids would be carried out on them by the domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry enforcement officers.

i remember vaguely the incident where some VCD pedler followed an officer in his vehicle and tail him from one end to another, or the VCD pedler even blocked his care or what and threatened him. that incident became quite a news, and i don’t know if it was from that incident onwards that the govt. allows the officers to carry pistols during their raids.

i remember then in newsgroup like beritamalaysia, there were active discussion going on, on the pros and cons of letting the officers be armed. if i’m not mistaken somebody mentioned the officers might become trigger happy and simply shoot at the slightest chance he can find, while another argue that VCD pedlers nowadays are very aggresive and ‘samseng’ type, so the officers need to be armed to protect themselves (self defence).

well, so it was, with the recent incident in penang, where a VCD seller was shot. the officer said he had to shoot when yeoh yew jin (the VCD pedler who was shot) together with his friends, use baseball bats to attack him. however, in today’s news, it seems that the police who had went to the scene of shooting could not find any bats.

the shot that the officer fired at yeoh yew jin was at such close range that it went out his chest and hit another man, chow heng khow who was seated near him. and today the minister of domestic trade and consumer affairs, datuk shafie apdal, apologised to this ‘innocent bystander’ who was accidentally hit.

apologised to this innocent bystander, but not the VCD pedler who was shot? of course this means he stand by his officer who shot yeoh yew jin, i guess. will he apologised after investigation had done, and let’s say it was found out the officer was negligent?

i’m not saying the officer was negligent or the VCD pedler was innocent. it was just a thought of who was right and who was wrong. at the moment, it’s kind of difficult to tell. some would ever ready to say the officer was wrong to open fire, or if he really had to open fire, why can’t he shoot the legs or arms instead of the chest. well of course if one was in a panic, one wouldn’t think of oh… where to shoot him ah so that he can’t die. when one is in a panic and fear for his own life, he won’t have time to think!

another thing is we all know nowadays VCD pedlers are very aggresive lot, and some are even involved in gangsterism. hence the need for the enforcement officers to be armed.

OTOH, of course we have some enforcement officers who were maybe not too experienced with their work, or who panic easily, and thus quickly take out his pistol and start firing.

well i guess we wouldn’t really know what’s the actual situation yet until full police investigation had been carried out.

according to rajan anyway, it looks like he was against this idea of providing arms to the enforcement officers for self defence. he had a good point there though, saying that the main problem here is tackling piracy (and corruption!) and not whether to arm or not to arm. (oops. but the former already enforced).

UPDATED: further news:
PM : guns to stay.
factory worker saddled with RM15000 bill.

it’s interesting to read pak lah’s views. somebody would say it was a knee-jerk reaction.

“we may not be able to do that (disarm the officers) just because of what one man has done. i am sure we cannot say that everybody else will commit the same action.”

oh hello mr PM… one man, right… but if all officers continue to be armed, sooner or later, there’ll be more than one man!