Better Police Deployment

Better Police Deployment

(A version of this was published in theSun on 29th June 2012).

My previous column on the increasing crime rate proposed that the management of crime should be decentralised. The Royal Malaysian Police responded to this piece with an eight-page letter. This is the sort of discourse with public officials and institutions that the Malaysian public have long been waiting for. It is hoped that such interaction and meaningful exchange of ideas will continue, especially given last week’s incident in which a woman was robbed and slashed at a shopping centre carpark.

In his reply, the Assistant Head of Bukit Aman’s Public Relations IGP Secretariat listed the efforts that have been implemented to curb crime. He also stated that the crime rate has actually been decreasing, implying it is only a matter of perception. In this regard, it would be useful for the police and Pemandu to release not just national or state crime figures, but broken down by districts as well, and tracked over a period of time. This would help citizens to get involved in crime prevention in their own localities.

But crime statistics can only get you so far, because not all crimes are reported. This is partly to do with the lack of trust in a system they believe no longer works.

A more useful issue to tackle is that of deployment. The Royal Commission to Enhance the Operation and Management of the Royal Malaysian Police in 2005 recommended a total of 17,902 police officers should be redeployed to the front line, whereas a Parliamentary reply in October 2011 stated that only 7402 such police have been deployed.

In their reply to me, the police stated that it is not accurate to take only those in the CID division as being involved in combating crime, and that in fact more than 90 percent of personnel within Management and Logistics, Internal Security and Public Order, Narcotics and Commercial Crime Departments amongst others are also involved in crime prevention.

However, these officers may not necessarily have been given the appropriate police training for crime prevention and investigation skills. Under their respective departments, a traffic police would receive training on traffic regulations, whilst a commercial investigating officer would receive business, administration and cyber operations training.

Whilst it is encouraging to note that other officers are being redirected to tackle crime, one wonders if their duties and capabilities are being appropriately matched. The sort of crime that citizens are fearful of is crime on the streets, and so it would only be meaningful if they are reassigned as criminal investigating officers to best tackle such crimes.

This also begs the question of the disproportionate number of police officers within departments such as the Special Branch, Management and Logistics Departments, as well as the Pasukan Gerakan Am, the latter arm of which is used when controlling street demonstrations. The Special Branch, for example, has almost the same budget allocated for personnel as the CID does, 7.44 percent and 7.64 percent respectively. In addition, over a third of police funding goes to Internal Security. Are police resources being appropriately allocated to the divisions that actually tackle crime?

This brings me to the issue of decentralisation. The police’s response to me stated that centralisation is the best way to tackle “terrorism and other threats to internal security”. One traces the historical roots of this emphasis to the days of fighting communism and guerrilas in the jungle. But such counter-insurgency efforts are no longer a primary concern. The divisions dealing with these could be better deployed to crime prevention.

In fact, the police states that our current force is “effectively decentralised at state level, and into district and station levels”. This is not the sort of decentralisation I referred to. What I meant was more empowered state and local governments that can determine the best crime-prevention methods which are most effective in their areas, and given the jurisdiction to do so instead of relying on directives from a singular authority. What works in Gombak may not work in Bandar Utama.

They also cited other countries like the UK and US that have adopted decentralised police forces, which still maintain a centralised force. This is precisely my point – nobody is saying the centralised police unit need be dismantled – but that crime prevention can be better and more efficiently managed with the additional personnel at ground level.

The argument that they make on easier logistical co-ordination of a centralised police force is irrelevant. If the current system is not proving sufficiently worthy, any amount of logistical headaches are worth the effort for the sake of improving people’s lives. Secondly, the Home Ministry has been successful in raising nearly 3 million RELA (People’s Volunteer Corps) members and co-ordinating them.

Finally, it is noted that the police currently targets crime hotspots, which it also uses to measure its success rates. However, it may be more useful to identify white, grey and black areas in crime, a method used in combating the communist insurgency. In the long run, this would require decentralising crime management in order to make it work.

More and more Malaysians – those who can afford it, that is – are choosing to live in gated communities or condominiums, where they pay monthly charges for private security. Citizens should not have to pay for private security if the police forces are able to provide them the security they require.

We have to ultimately go back to the question of political responsibility and accountability. As long as there is disproportionate police financing, with greater weight given to, say, political monitoring as opposed to combating street crime, this does the police force a disfavour. It is hoped that this proposal of evaluating police allocation of financial resources, as well as police deployment, will be so noted by the policymakers.

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