By Frankie D’Cruz | July 31, 2013
The Malay Mail Online
JULY 31 — Amid the outpouring of widespread public spleen over public security, gun violence is running riot and fuelling the explosive tone of rising crime.
After a brutal stretch of 15 shootings since April – the most high profile involving Monday’s assassination of the founder of Arab Malaysia Bank Hussain Ahmad Najadi, you’d have expected the incidents to bring notice to an epidemic of gun crimes.
Sadly, the gun crisis hasn’t prodded the authorities to come together to contain the culture of violence and the easy availability of firearms in Malaysia.
Gun crime isn’t a new and distinct issue but the recent cases suggest that carrying of a firearm has become increasingly common place.
We speculate criminals get their guns from a neighbouring country. We theorise observable patterns to gun crime. What we know for sure is that gun crime is a sign of collapsed civil life.
We cringe when criminals rule the streets. We recoil when police officers are implicated in crime. We reel in sorrow when a whistleblower is taken out for anti-crime activism.
We then take the imperfect police-public relationship to a new level of antagonism – and the collective responsibility to fight crime takes a beating.
That’s when criminals add more firepower to their activities and their whingeing relatives swear by their ‘innocence’. in the meantime, the public suffers and remains at the mercy of criminals — and an ineffective security risk management system.
Following the execution of Najadi, the founder of Arab-Malaysian Development Bank, and the attempted murder of crime watchdog MyWatch chairman R. Sri Sanjeevan on Saturday – both in high people traffic areas – tolerance for public safety failure has dipped to an all-time low.
The usual arguments have begun while official response to gun violence has been unconvincing. The government doesn’t have a powerful ‘tool’ to check gun violence.
Failure to address gun crimes has backfired, leaving the public helpless. That is one of one of the most pressing problems involving public security we face as a nation.
I repeat what I wrote at the height of custodial deaths recently: “I detest that we know there is a familiar outline to such misfortunes. I loathe that we can accurately forecast what comes next.
“I hate that we can precisely predict the stand of the authorities. I hate that after a tiresome period of fury, we have to say ‘nothing will change’.”
Clearly, that reeks of disregard for public safety. Still, expect the theatrics to go on for a while – because nothing will change.
Will the Sanjeevan shooting in which rogue cops have been implicated be the trigger for the setting up of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC)?
Putrajaya must be forced to recognise the huge damage inflicted on it by failing public security and that self-fulfilling rhetoric must be cast aside.
Senior police officers, privately furious over the recent shootings, tell me they believe unchecked gun violence signals a profound crisis for public security.
It is apparent that the police strategy to curb gun violence is lying in ruins and its notion that it enjoys public confidence in fighting crime somewhat overstated.
Recurring cases of serious crimes will further isolate the police and make it harder for them to win public support.
Whatever the future, the police force suddenly looks detached from society.
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Multi-award winning journalist Frankie D’Cruz is editor of The Malay Mail. He can be reached at frankie@mmail.com.my or Twitter @frankieDcruz.