Crime is Up, Cops are Down By Kee Thuan Chye Day after day, we keep getting reports of break-ins, muggings and robberies. Even of diners at popular restaurants falling victim to marauding gangs. All this makes us think that the police are getting less and less efficient at curbing crime. In fact, the crime rate seems to be going up and up, but until lately, the Government was denying it. In June 2012, the home minister then, Hishammuddin Hussein, said the crime rate was going down, and that if people thought it was going up instead, it was merely their “perception”. He was lambasted for his condescending comment. One month later, the Government got its Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) to come out with statistics claiming that the crime index had dropped by 10 per cent for the first half of 2012, along with an 11 per cent reduction in 2011. It also reported a striking 39.7 per cent drop in street crime. But when anonymous and former police officers and the Malaysian Crime Watch Task Force (MyWatch) alleged that the Government had been manipulating the figures, Hishammuddin said in January 2013 that the crime index was not important – because numbers could be “disputed and belittled”. He reiterated that the Government had truly succeeded in cutting down crime. The turning point – or so it felt like one – came when in late June 2013, the home of Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin in Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, got broken into. Then suddenly, it seemed as if the truth had hit home. KL wasn’t so safe after all. Maybe because it had happened to someone in government. Khairy himself remarked, “This incident is a reminder to us all that crime is a serious problem in our country. It is a real issue and not just merely a perception.” Several days later, the new home minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, actually said the crime rate was increasing, but he blamed it on the absence of the Emergency Ordinance (EO), which was repealed last year. He said this took away the powers of the police to detain without trial anyone suspected of engaging in crime or gangsterism. And that the repeal also allowed ex-detainees to be freed and to return to their lives of crime. This was a poor excuse for police incompetence. About 2,600 detainees were released, but would all of them have returned to crime? Unfortunately, the minister provided no statistics or evidence to back up his claim, so it remains mere speculation. And speculation cannot be enough to bring back a draconian law. Besides, why should our police be aided by something like the EO when many countries in the world don’t have it and yet the police there are coping as they should? Wouldn’t bringing back the EO make the work of our police force easier, and our policemen lazier, since they could shut away any suspect without having to try too hard to prove their criminality in a court of law? Is it because the police had it easy with the EO that they now find it harder to deal with crime without it? Just look at how things have got worse. In the space of less than a week, we have suddenly seen two shootings in the streets, one of them ending in death. The unfortunate fatality was that of Hussain Ahmad Najadi, founder of the Arab-Malaysian Development Bank, who was shot dead on July 29 in a car park at Lorong Ceylon, KL. His wife was also shot in the hand and thigh. FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT: news.malaysia.msn/community/blogs/crime-is-up-cops-are-down
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 10:52:04 +0000
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