vox populi small thumbnail'For every citizen (whether he or she is a convict) killed by the police without following proper procedure, the IGP and home minister are vicariously liable.'

Victim's family cries foul over 'trigger-happy' police

Singa Pura Pura: The lawyer for the police shooting victim was grossly mistaken to have claimed that the police were possibly trigger-happy. Obviously, the counsel is not in the habit of reading the newspapers. On my part, I have been faithfully reading the newspapers for the last half-century.

The police always have, and always will, fire harmless warning shots into the air before they actually take aim at the suspect or accused person. The suspect invariably ignores the warning shots. In every case, or almost every case, it is the suspect who then opens fire first, but he always misses. The police return fire, but they seldom miss.

To my knowledge, as gleaned from a reading of the newspapers for the last half-century, it has never been the practice of the police to shoot first. It has never occurred to me that the police are trigger-happy as alleged.

Henry Hock: For every citizen (whether he or she is a convict) killed by the police without following proper procedure, the IGP (inspector-general of police) and home minister are vicariously liable, both in their individual and collective responsibility. Even if they are not sued in their personal capacity, they must resign.

Justice Seeker: About 10 years back, two of my nephews had just returned from a shopping spree in Chow Kit. Just as they entered the house compound and parked their car, two plainclothes policemen rushed in and wanted to arrest them.

I intervened and demanded to know on what grounds the police were arresting them. Their reply was my nephews were suspected drug peddlers. When I asked them why the suspicion, their answer was that they were seen around the drug transaction zone in Chow Kit and they had followed them back to the house.

I told them my nephews were university undergraduates and they did not belong to such category of people. They insisted on taking them to the police station and do a body search. But when I identified myself as to who I was, they apologised and went off hurriedly.

Till today I dread to think of my nephews' predicament if I was not in the house.

Concern_Father: Plainclothes policemen can carry guns. Remember, they are trying to catch criminals who do not follow the law and yet they need to follow the law to catch them. It's not an easy job.

Nevertheless, our police should be trained to disable the suspect, not to kill him or her. Once you kill, the situation become irreversible, just like the Aminulrasyid Amzah case. The police force walk a very thin line when dealing with suspects as they could kill them.

Outahere: Dear Concern_Father, I am a father too. There are strict procedures for the police to observe while carrying out their duties to avoid injuries and fatalities to the suspects or themselves. The police officers are human too and they do make mistakes, thus the procedures are amended from time to time.

The cases we have here are major non-compliance, whether intentional or otherwise.

Klangboy: Plainclothes policemen have no right to detain nor search anyone until they identified themselves as police officers, period. How is the public to know whether they are police, robbers or gangsters... not that there is much difference in appearance anyway.

Remaja 2011: Yesterday, I watched ‘Road Rampage' on Astro... in almost every situation where the police were going after the ‘criminal' who were fleeing on motorcycles, cars, bus or even huge containers... they only shot at the tyres or the vehicles to stop them, but never at the drivers. Here, we don't waste time.

Pietiring: Let us too not be trigger-happy to shoot our anger at the police force. We must get both sides of the story. The police are human beings like us and they sacrifice their lives in order to protect the public at large. The misgivings of a few must not be magnified into a full condemnation of the police force.

Tired: If all of you are so adverse to policemen discharging their firearms in the course of duty, then petition all Pakatan Rakyat MPs and Aduns to petition the government to ban the police from carrying firearms.

Instead, issue them with batons like the London bobbies. I think the critics of the police force forget one thing - it is easy to pass judgements from the comfort of our home when our policemen are on the field, facing danger everyday and having to make split second decisions, which will either make or wreck their day. Go figure whether this is fair or not.

Anonymous: To those of you who are still supporting and giving excuses to the police action, would you stop your vehicle if you are being pulled over by a group of unidentified men in plainclothes? If one of them put four bullets in your body right after that because you failed to stop, would you think differently?

Concerned Citizen: We demand for the IPCMC (Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission). Have our PDRM (Royal Police Force) become as dangerous as the criminals out there? What is the basis for the police to stop this guy? Two men in plainclothes with guns started shouting at you, would you have stopped?


Anwar scores minor victory after Federal Court defeat

Changeagent: This is hardly a minor victory at all for Anwar Ibrahim. He fought long and hard just to get access to some pro-forma form when it should have been provided to the defence team in the first place.

That said, it is still a very welcome development. I hope the defence will find enough discrepancies in the documents to shred the whole devious and fraudulent prosecution case apart.

Ferdtan: The judge has no choice but to let Anwar win this round by agreeing to the demand for the 'pro-forma' document as he did not want to give the defence valid ground in their bid to recuse him from the case.

Anwar, keep playing hard ball with them - continue with your notice of motion to get the judge out and the contempt bid against Dr Siew Sheue Feng. The public perception is that you are bound to lose this case, so don't take any prisoners.

Pemerhati: The initial strong resistance by the prosecution to releasing the ‘pro-forma' document to the defence would suggest that its contents would have jeopardised the Sodomy II trial on trumped-up charges.

But the relentless pursuit for the document by the defence and the blunder made by Dr Siew by admitting to referring to the document during the recess, have forced the court to give in to the defence's demands.

But if the prosecution has already prepared its script to convict Anwar on false charges, it is not inconceivable that they would have told the doctor to destroy the original document and prepare an entirely new false ‘pro-forma' document which would conform to the prosecution's script.

Lesungbatu: And where's Foreign Minister Anifah Aman who promised to give DSAI (Anwar Ibrahim) a fair trial when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Malaysia some weeks ago?

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