Was the Sepang district police HQ break-in an inside job?

 

On Friday, July 28, someone entered the exhibit store at the Sepang district police headquarters illegally and removed items which were crucial in many narcotic cases.

More importantly, a bag which contained a laptop with information on the exhibits was also stolen.

One would have thought that breaking into a police station, one of the more secure places in the country would have been difficult, but apparently this was not the case.

Was this break-in an inside job? Or was a professional burglar given vital security details to gain easy entry?

Stranger yet was that a police report about the store being ransacked and case items stolen has gone viral.

When reporters contacted Selangor police chief, Hussein Omar Khan, on July 30, he said that no arrests had been made as investigations were ongoing. He made an odd remark about having “to rectify many things first”.

What did he mean by this? What are the “things” he mentioned? Why must they be done “first”?

Was he referring to the malfunctioning CCTV at the police station which had been highlighted in the viralled report?

Who posted this report on the net and embarrassed the Sepang police force? Was it another policeman who was aware of the goings on and incompetence of his police station, but for reasons of his own, was afraid to talk?

Nevertheless by Tuesday, Aug 1, Hussein said a police sergeant in his 40s attached to the branch’s commercial unit had been arrested.

Hussein said that his force was calculating the value of the stolen items and investigating the motive behind the incident. The case was being investigated under Section 457 of the Penal Code.

There are many disturbing things about this crime.

How many times has evidence stored in police vaults been stolen in the past? Were the break-ins ever solved and the culprits punished? Are the items which are vital for use in prosecution cases, properly recorded and stored securely? Were the irresponsible policemen who failed to store the evidence punished?

There are a number of possible reasons for the theft; but why was the laptop with the information on the missing items stored in a bag in the same premises and not locked away? Were back-ups made?

If the street value of the drugs is huge, could a drug syndicate have approached a disaffected or corrupt policeman and either paid him or blackmailed him into stealing the items? Missing evidence means that a criminal case cannot continue and the guilty will not be prosecuted.

Did the dirty cop want to sell the drugs?

The CCTV was damaged in Sepang, but past experience has shown that many crimes committed on government premises, like police stations, lockups and MACC offices, lack CCTV footage to provide vital clues.

Detainees in lockups have been seriously injured or died after being tortured by policemen.

In Miri, in January 2021, an underage girl was raped by another detainee. After an internal investigation, the Sarawak police commissioner, Aidi Ismail, said that the CCTVs at the Miri police station lacked a recording facility and had to be monitored by personnel on duty.

The CCTVs also failed political aide Teoh Beng Hock, customs officer, Ahmad Sarbani and police detainee A Kugan, and several others who died while they were detained in police or MACC premises.

It was the CCTV of a private house which recorded the precious seconds when Pastor Raymond Koh was abducted in broad daylight on a busy main road and bundled into a black SUV. Was any footage obtained from the cameras at traffic junctions? Or were they damaged or pointing the other way?

When will the PDRM and MACC learn from past mistakes?

What’s the point of successive governments allocating millions of ringgit for surveillance cameras which are damaged or improperly used? - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.