No more excuses, reform the police force now

MP SPEAKS First of all, I would like to express my commiseration to Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin whose house in Bukit Damansara was broken into in broad daylight over the weekend.

My own terrace house had been broken into twice in 2009 and 2010, which was a reason why my family moved in 2011 to an apartment which has 24-hour security.
 
No one, whether a minister or politician from Pakatan Rakyat or the BN or any man in the street, should be subjected to the trauma of crime. We are thankful that, in this instance, no one was injured in the incident. 

This and many other incidents of crime in recent months affecting VIPS, including family members of  ministers and senior police officers, prove that crime is not mere perception in Malaysia. If ministers and senior police officers are not safe from crime, then how can ordinary folk sleep in peace?
 
Khairy himself accepted as much in his Facebook comment yesterday evening, writing: ‘Insiden ini adalah peringatan kepada kita semua bahawa jenayah merupakan masalah serius di negara kita. Masalah ini adalah perkara yang nyata, bukan semata-mata persepsi.’(This incident reminds us that crime is a serious problem in our country. This problem is actual and not one of perception.)
 
The threat of crime has forced the man in the street to take matters into their own hands by setting up ‘illegal’ boom gates and access barriers as well as forking out millions of ringgit every year to employ security guards to protect themselves. 

These acts of barricading housing estates into war zones are certainly not acts of wanting to "live in exclusivity" as alleged previously in Parliament by Abdul Rahman Dahlan, the member of parliament for Kota Belud.

There is no question that crime statistics over the past years have been manipulated to give Malaysians a false perception of security.

The government has claimed that street crimes have been reduced by 40 percent in recent years while the crime index has fallen by 25 percent from 2007 to 2011. What the government has attempted to hide from Malaysians is that non-index crimes have, over the same period, increased by a whopping 69 percent!
 
The most incredulous of the BN government’s claims must be that Malaysia is the safest country in Southeast Asia, even safer than Singapore, and some say, Hong Kong and Japan.

Weaknesses in fighting crime
 
We must stop lying to ourselves and the government must start admitting the severity of crime in the country. Unless the government and the police are willing to accept the fact, there will be no sense of urgency among the authorities to make things better.  

What we will get instead are excuses by the police force and even Pemandu, that the repeal of the Emergency Ordinance to keep suspects under two-year detention orders have caused an increase in crime.
 
The police must concede that the real reason behind the weaknesses in fighting crime is the sheer misallocation of resources within the force. 

Over the past eight years, the criminal investigation department (CID) has comprised barely 9 percent of the police force. 

In stark contrast, 41 percent of uniformed police perform management functions, while 31 percent are tasked with internal security and public order such as the Federal Reserve Unit, the Light Strike Force as well as the General Operations Force.
 
Even the Special Branch of the police has nearly the same number of personnel as the CID.  In fact the Budget figures in 2010 showed that the police produced 733,237 reports and security checks by the Special Branch, but only 211,645 criminal investigation papers. So, the Special Branch produced more than three times as many reports as the CID.
 
The 2005 Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) Report recommended about 20,000 uniformed personnel or 22 percent of the force could be reassigned to go back to active core policing work. Unfortunately this recommendation was never taken seriously by the Home Ministry.
 
The Home Ministry and the police must stop giving excuses for the rising spate of crime. They must accept the findings of the RCI carried out eight years ago and implement all the necessary measures to improve the effectiveness and professionalism of the police force.  

Failure to do so will only see crime persist at high and increasing levels, making Malaysia unsafe not only for its citizens, but also as a conducive country for business and investment.

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TONY PUA is the DAP parliamentarian for Petaling Jaya Utara.