Celebrating Police Day! (4)
By Martin Jalleh

The rakyat was told that the government’s battle against crime showed good results in 2010. Home Minister Hishammuddin Tun Hussein announced in May 2010 that his Ministry’s success in reducing the crime rate index for the first four months of the year had surpassed the initial target.

Minister in the PM’s Department Senator Idris Jala revealed the results of the National Key Results Area (NKRA) for crime were outstanding for the first quarter and what the police and the ministry had done in that period was totally beyond expectation.

In Oct. 2010 a very elated IGP Ismail Omar proudly declared that police statistics indicated a significant drop in street crime by 38% and in the overall crime index by 16% between January and September.

But strangely, and as was so aptly put by Lim Kit Siang in October, “…up and down the country, ordinary Malaysians do not feel this dividend of fall of crime index in their daily lives as they do not feel comparatively safer in the streets, public places or privacy of their homes…”

In fact Kit Siang’s sentiments were so eloquently echoed by former Deputy Bank Governor Tan Sri Dr. Lin See Yin, in his article “The mystique of national transformation” which appeared online before the year ended:
Read the rest of this entry »

Celebrating Police Day! (3)
By Martin Jalleh

There was deep concern and consternation throughout 2010 over what the public viewed as the growing “shoot-to-kill” culture by the police force or what R. Sivarasa, the MP for Subang, called “a culture of impunity”.

“It means that they feel that they can do as they wish and they won’t be held accountable… they can shoot, kill, and there won’t be any questions asked (or)… any investigations and that they can continue doing so,” he said.

The nationwide concern over the trigger-happy cops of PDRM culminated into public outraged in April with the police “killing” of 14-year old Form III student Aminulrasyid Hamzah about 100 metres from his Shah Alam house.

The callous responses and cavalier attitude of the IGP, Home Minister and the police as they tried to contain the public firestorm caused the public to lose confidence in them and repeatedly call for the IGP to resign.

Respected lawyer Art Harun captured the sentiments of the people so clearly: “Right-minded people of Malaysia regard the killing of Aminulrasyid as symptomatic of lawless totalitarianism.” Read the rest of this entry »

CELEBRATING “POLICE DAY” (2)
by Martin Jalleh

2010 was yet another year when the police were allowed to continue to operate in an environment of impunity when it came to their excessive methods in relation to arrest, detention and treatment of persons in custody.

Two tragic episodes in the year made the culture of police brutality increasingly obvious and gave further credence to the accusation that Bolehland has become a Police State.

The first was an “open verdict” delivered by a coroner’s court on 25 Oct. 2010 in an inquest to determine the cause of R Gunasegaran’s death in the Sentul police station on 16 July, 2009, a few hours after Teoh Beng Hock’s body was discovered.

In a press statement entitled: “End Police Brutality now” a “deeply concerned” Malaysian Bar commented on the “inability of the coroner to make a definitive finding in this case” in spite of “the strength of the evidence pointing to the culpability of the police”.

The second was the shocking story of K Selvach Santhiran, a key witness who implicated the police in the abovementioned inquest. His lawyer, N Surendran would describe his client’s nightmare as “the continuing descent of the police force into lawlessness”. Read the rest of this entry »