The alarming incidence of rape and murder cases has brought to a head the crisis of public security in the country. Where we live and where we work, snatch thefts and robberies have become common occurrences and these have become no longer news worthy.

Crime statistics are well-known to be unreliable because they are invariably understated but the almost daily news reports of rape and brutal murder - 588 rape cases and 250 murder cases in the first five months of this year - cry out for an urgent reform of the Malaysian police force.

The Police Act 1987 lists five cardinal functions of the police, namely, crime prevention, detection, arrest, security and maintaining public order. The problem with the Malaysian police lies not simply in their failure to provide personal security through their wrong priorities but also in their lack of accountability.

We know that the Malaysian police force does not lack numbers, namely, 80,000 personnel to police 26 million people. We inherited a huge bureaucracy from the colonial power with the police being given more powers than was needed at independence. This was mainly inflated during the emergency.

But what proportion of this force is involved in making the streets safe for Malaysians? Complain to your local police station about dearth of security in your neighbourhood and the officer-in-charge will surely blame it on insufficient personnel.

Political agenda

Firstly, the sizeable police field force (general operations force) and the federal reserve unit are pre-occupied with putting down peaceful gatherings when they are best suited for fighting crime.

Public assemblies are almost always over-manned by the police. If the police do not have a political agenda in discouraging dissent then they have terrible intelligence and faulty judgement in assessing the situation.

Secondly, the special branch personnel are less visible to the general public but to the seasoned activist, the numbers involved in spying on peaceful gatherings are unjustified. When one is detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA), it is then that you realise how much taxpayers are paying for countless special branch operatives working at the detention centers and outside.

Add to these the police personnel we see daily doing non-priority work such as stopping motorists who do not wear safety belts on quiet roads or in traffic jams.

The problem with our Malaysian political culture lies in the blurring of the lines dividing the government, ruling parties and the institutions of state.

In fact, during Operation Lalang in 1987, Tunku Abdul Rahman called ours a "police state" when innocent peace-loving citizens were arrested and detained for dubious reasons. It was obvious the police had acted in concert with the executive to create a situation that facilitated the assault on the judiciary and the solution of the Umno crisis.

No accountability

Police personnel who torture detainees under the ISA are not accountable to anyone. There have been allegations of torture by political detainees at the hands of the Malaysian police since Independence but there have been few cases of these torturers being brought to account.

The two-month sentence served on the former inspector-general of police for assaulting the former deputy prime minister during the latter's incarceration hardly served as a deterrent to these torturers in the Malaysian police force.

According to the Suaram Human Rights Report 2002, 34 persons have died in police custody since 2000 - there were six deaths in 2000, 10 deaths in 2001, and a further eighteen as of September 2002. Between 1980 to 1990, 151 prisoners died in remand while there were sixty reported cases of persons killed by the police in 1998.

Suhakam's public inquiry into allegations of police misconduct in November 2002 found unprovoked violence on the part of the police, unnecessarily long detentions of arrested protesters and deliberate humiliation of prisoners. The police failure to provide security to ethnic Indian Malaysians was alleged in the Kampung Medan violence in 2001, which left six dead and 48 severely wounded.

A police force in a democratic society is a non-partisan apparatus upholding the public law, public order and justice. It should not be an instrument of the ruling political coalition nor should the police be the censors of private beliefs and pursuers of thought crime.

Its normal tasks include the protection and preservation of life and property; prevention and suppression of crime; enforcement of laws, and apprehension of offenders. Above all, the police must win the public trust.

It is a basic democratic principle that individuals who are elected or appointed to exercise power over others should be accountable for their actions. As such we should enable democratically elected representatives to determine police policies, priorities and policing methods within the law.

National guidelines

There should thus be national guidelines and standards on policing methods and equipment agreed by nationally elected representatives. There is no reason for the special branch to be only accountable to the home minister and not to Parliament. At the local level, locally elected representatives should determine the priorities, policies and policing methods of their local police force and the appropriate resources to be devoted to them.

In cases of complaints against the police, it is unacceptable for the police force itself to investigate its own personnel. This was the case for example, when a "high powered team of police officers" was found to investigate the former deputy prime minister's allegations that he was physically abused while in police custody.

Their findings were then submitted to the then home minister, who happened to be the prime minister himself! There must be a truly independent machinery for the investigation of such complaints and all investigations should take place in the presence of legal counsel.

Policing needs to be rooted in the community but it is not there to control people. Rather, community policing demands specific skills including the ability to develop rapport with the community. A good community police personnel will know an area intimately as well as the problems faced by people in the area.

With a successful and trusted community police force, the people in the area will be more inclined to form "neighbourhood watches" against thieves, robbers, rapists and other would-be criminals.

Ultimately, the increasingly serious social problems we face today will have to be solved through substantive reforms of Malaysian institutions as well as humanistic education within a just, equal, democratic society which respects human rights.

Dr KUA KIA SOONG is principal of the community-funded New Era College and a director of human rights group Suaram. He was a member of parliament and an Internal Security Act detainee.