the police

remember my blog on royal commission of police (the full name is such a mouthful!), and at comments, ali allah ditta posted a letter by kim quek who wrote to malaysiakini. well, yesterday there was another letter as interesting as kim quek, from sim kwang yang, a former DAP MP in malaysiakini entitled ‘who will police the police?’. I find that much of what he wrote there were very true indeed.

in the letter, he mentioned that the very fact the PM ‘needs a royal commission to investigate the police is a public admission that the internal mechanism for recruiting, training and disciplining police personnel has collapsed. it also means that the ministry of home affairs and the minister himself has failed.’

how true. when i first heard that the govt. was considering setting up the royal commission, i thought to myself wow, so it (the police) is really that bad huh. what in the world had happened to our police department? why do we hear so much horror police stories from the public, like when someone was detained, the abuse and torturing they underwent. the police are suppose to protect us but it seems that people had began to fear the police. and as sim kwang yang pointed out, if a public poll were conducted as who’s the most corrupt, the police would come top.

sim kwang yang wrote:
if you want to know the extent of police corruption, ask the humble taxi drivers and others involved in the transportation and construction industries. has it not become a malaysian way of life that those who own and drive a car cannot avoid the fate of settling an unofficial traffic fine on the spot, once in a while, especially prior to major festivities?

and talking about corruption among crime policemen, sim kwang yang said that once
an underworld godfather told him that the difference between a policeman and a gangster is that the former has a state licence to inflict physical violence on citizens.

frightening, isn’t it?

(in that context, read this – bashed up by cops!)