Police Patrol Car with CTVs?

Tan Sri Musa Hassan said that police petrol vehicles will be installed with closed circuit television cameras to monitor the movements of personnel and record events at crime scenes. The department through the Ministry of Home Affairs had requested the fund from the Treasury and Economic Planning Unit to equip the 3000 patrol cars in the country.

For the past few years the police had been allocated a substantial amount of money to increase and strengthen its manpower and upgrade its equipment with the objective to make the department effective in combating crime and restore public confidence in the security of the community. On several occasions public relation exercise had been conducted to get public cooperation to fight crime.

The issue here is all these efforts succeed in reducing or minimizing crime in the country. Why is it that the number of crime and crime related incident don’t seem to down? What was highlighted in the newspaper is one issue. What was not reported is another issue which cannot do the country proud. If only the police can reveal the statistic of the number of reports made by the public at all police stations will be frightening.

What actually went wrong? In United States, the sight of police personnel in uniform or police patrol cars patrolling the streets is enough to shiver the wrongdoing. Here the public don’t seem to have respect or confidence in the police to enforce the law. Motorcyclists do not respect the traffic light as if they are colorblind by simply not only beating but even go against the traffic light. On many occasion motorcyclists don’t even put on their crash helmet while riding. Beating queue is another common sight.

So the issue here is why is it the respect for abiding the law is not there. With upgrading the equipment, increasing manpower and increase in information and technology such as CCTV will reduce the crime and law breaking incident. This is yet to be seen.

What is clear is, if the increase in manpower, and upgrading equipment and introducing new gadget won’t achieve the desired results, if the police do not really study their capability to fully utilize the new assets. The purchases of new patrol cars are being left to rot in various places because of the lack of drivers to drive the cars. Driving patrol cars need skills which new drivers are not well equipped. Patrol car drivers must have proper training and training takes time. By the time the drivers are trained the cars are already not in good shape after being left for so long. In one case a police station built by housing developer is not properly used. Instead of using it as a police station, it was used as a logistic base to store police vehicles. The personnel manning the base does not do police work which led to many motorcyclist and public not respecting and belittle the personnel.

So unless the top management of the force really go to the ground and make a study of the weaknesses, it will be a waste of public funds which desired to achieve the objectives set not attainable. Finally the police on duty should be well discipline and really enforced the law. The public will learn their lesson only when they are really fine for the offence committed. Give them two of three fines and they will learn their lesson. Police personnel should not be seen to have coffee at mamak shop while on duty. The public don’t like to see that. If they need rest, it is not at coffee shop.

This write up is not meant to belittle the police force. It is meant to make the police top management and the personnel to realize the mistake done. If they enforce the law properly and firmly, the confidence of the public and the respect for the force will certainly be upheld.