The Federal Government should refocus the police on fighting crime
3 shootings yesterday, including the murder in broad daylight of Arab-Malaysian Development Bank founder Hussain Ahmad Najadi in the centre of Kuala Lumpur, proves that rising crime is no longer a perception but an indictment of the police failure and the urgent need to move away from its unhealthy obsession on political opponents of BN. The other two shootings was a murder in Ipoh and injury in Bukit Mertajam.
Previously the police had blamed the abolition of the Emergency Ordinance that permitted many gangsters to be released for the proliferation of gangland murders and rising crime. The police can no longer blame the abolition of the Emergency Ordinance on the murder of Hussain as he is no criminal but a respected international banker.
These latest murders has shocked Malaysians who reaslise how seriously the Federal government has failed to ensure public order and security, especially with the shooting in Bahau last Saturday also in broad daylight of MyWatch chairperson R Sri Sanjeevan. With allegations swirling around that R Sri Sanjeevan shooting was related to cops’ links with the underworld, the credibility and integrity of the police has plunged to new lows.
The time has come for the Federal government to let the police focus on its core business on fighting crime and not be exploited as a political tool for BN. Statistics do not lie and in a written parliamentary repy to the DAP MP for Kulai Teo Nie Ching this month, the Minister of Home Affairs said that,” of a total 112,583 police personnel in uniform, 10,150(9%) are in the Criminal Investigation Department,4,224(3.8%) in the Narcotic Criminal Investigation and 1,663(1.4%) in Commercial Investigation Department.” The Home Minister refused to mention how many police personnel were in the Special Branch.
It is unacceptable that only 9% of the police personnel are directly involved in fighting crime in the streets. Even if we include the Narcotics and Commercial Crime, only 14.2% of police personnel are focused on fighting crime in the streets. These numbers are too low. The number of police personnel involved in fighting crime should not be 14.2% but at least 50%. In other words there should be at least 56,000 police personnel in uniform patrolling the streets and not the present 16,037.
Even though Penang remains one of the safest states in Malaysia, the Penang state government is working closely with the Penang police to ensure Penang remains one. Apart from establishing the Voluntary Patrol Teams(VTP) to conduct community policing on their own housing estates, flats and kampongs, the state government is actively installing CCTVs to marry manpower with technology.
The Penang state government has directed that by the end of this year, the Penang Municipal Council (MPPP) and Seberang Perai Municpal Council(MPSP) must install an additional 70 CCTVs and 55 CCTVs respectively. This is on top of the existing 60 CCTVs in MPPP and 44 CCTVs in MPSP. The additional 125 CCTVs will cost an additional 3 million.
To overcome the problem of insufficient number of police personnel to monitor the increased CCTVs round-the-clock, the Penang state government has offered to employ at its own expense staff to do the monitoring. This will allow uniformed personnel to perform their core duties of patrolling the streets to keep the public safe from crime.
The main emphasis should be on the Federal Government refocusing the police on fighting crime and not dealing with political opponents of BN, by increasing the police personnel fighting crime from the present 14.2% to at least 50%.
