army to patrol the streets?

what? first it was rela members and now territorial army personnel? is the police really that short-handed? are they (the MPs/authorities) going to allow other groups to fight crime, which is suppose to be the sole responsibility of the police?

yesterday’s star paper front-paged the the deputy home minister had suggested that the territorial army personnel to be roped in to help police fight crime. this came a week after his chief suggested rela members to fight crime, particularly snatch thieves.

do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea? a friend of mine think it is the latter. he said this will be like giving more power to the rela members and they might abuse their power. remember we already heard of some negative remarks regarding rela members, particularly on how they treated migrant workers (one instance of how they made some migrant workes to walk like a duck).

this call of recruiting extra help for the police came in the wake of the numerous snatch thieves that had happened recently, many of which were fatal (victims died).

someone said that for many years snatch thieves had been happening all the while, but it looks like snatch thieves only happened rampantly these past year or two. why? only because it was reported more widely, and i guess also because of the advent of blogging, it had been publicised more!

so do we really need rela members and the army patrolling our streets on the watch-out for snatch thieves? or are they suppose to fight other crimes too, beside snatch thieves? well, take note that the deputy home affair minister had said to recruit the territorial army to “help police fight crime”, so he did not mean only snatch thieves! luckily the deputy IGP has the sense to say they don’t see the need of the territorial army to help them fight crimes. oh, but they are considering the rela members. so they really are short-handed?