I don’t know if Malaysian kids play old-fashioned games like ‘cops and robbers’ these days. Probably not, except perhaps in cyberspace.

In any case they’d probably find it as impossibly confusing as the rest of us do to figure out the difference between the cops and the robbers, if indeed there is any discernible distinction any more.

There also appears to be total confusion as to whether or not crime is on the rise. The recently-released 2007 statistics appear at a glance to indicate that it is.

But Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who attended the briefing at which the figures were revealed, couldn’t seem to get the story straight.

He first declared “I was very worried. I asked ‘What’s going on? Why is it so high?’” but then explained that five categories had been added to the statistics since 2006 and that the rise wouldn’t worry the public as well as foreign investors “if the situation was explained to them properly”.

How this would ‘explain’ away reported rises in good old-fashioned categories like rape (up 29.5 percent), night-time home break-ins (up 21.7 percent) and car thefts (up 11.4 percent), is a total mystery to me.

But in any case I wouldn’t trust Malaysian police statistics as far as I could throw Bukit Aman. There’s no reason to suppose that police record-keeping is any less slack, sloppy, dodgy, politically expedient and generally suspect than the rest of the force’s activities.

And where are the figures on crimes committed by the police themselves, like extortion, protection, soliciting bribes and beating and allegedly killing ‘suspects’ in their custody?

Speaking of police-related crime, what about the latest police scandal - what I suppose could justly be dubbed ‘The Curious Case of the Coppers’ Choppers’?

DAP MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok has accused Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan (photo) and a member of the Police Force Commission Othman Talib of conflict of interest in their dealings with a company named Web Power Sdn Bhd. She alleged that the police force is negotiating with Web Power, of which Talib is a director, on the rental of 31 helicopters at a cost of some RM400 million.

She also claimed that, besides improperly negotiating with the company, the police chief had displayed “unrelenting enthusiasm” for having Web Power appointed the service provider for the e-Police system.”

Misdirected efforts

Of course the e-Police system itself, besides providing an opportunity for more daylight robbery of public funds, is just another case of throwing good money after bad. There’s little point in beefing-up police technology when crime-fighting efforts are so often misdirected and suspicious.

It was not that long ago, for example, that the IGP and Deputy Internal Security Minister Mohd Johari Baharum (photo) were both accused of taking bribes to release organised-crime suspects from detention.

And though both were, of course, found blameless following a reported investigation, it seems strange that there is such a long silence on the whole subject of organised crime. Rackets traditionally run by gangs and triads - involving drug-dealing, sex-trafficking, prostitution, illegal gambling and loan-sharking - received little if any mention in the so-called statistics.
Suspiciously few ‘big fish’ are ever apprehended for such offences and, in the rare cases that they are, the whole operation smells more of police intervention in gang warfare than a genuine attempt to combat crime.

You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that playing cops ‘n robbers for both sides can make some police seriously rich. Yet when one of them was recently discovered to be worth some RM27 million, he was charged with failing to report his fortune rather than investigated for how he managed to amass it.

Serious consequences

Police-related robbery wouldn’t be so bad, I suppose, if it was only a matter of money. But unfortunately it doesn’t stop there, as every cop who is on the take or the make also costs the community dearly by default.

Traffic police who line their pockets in preference to curbing speeding and other perilous driving behaviour aren’t just petty thieves. They’re also contributing to the road toll that robs Malaysia of such an appalling number of lives.

Uniformed and plainclothes police who spend their shifts slacking off in coffeeshops or shaking-down suspects, or who consort and cooperate with the very offenders they’re supposed to be catching, aren’t just rip-off merchants. They’re also responsible for much of the robbery, rape, assault and murder from which, in dereliction of their sworn duty, they’re failing to protect the community.

And while Malaysia’s police force is failing to protect peoples’ lives and property, they are also complicit with the government in robbing citizens of their civil liberties.

The requirement of a police permit for a public assembly of five or more people is unconstitutional and therefore illegal. So is unwarranted stopping, searching and seizure, as at the roadblocks police are routinely ordered to set up to thwart peaceful anti-government protests.

It’s also against the law to conduct impromptu house-to-house searches as police in Johor have been doing in search of copies of the sex video starring the former health minister. Or to hunt down donors to the Hindu Rights Action Forece, having high-handedly declared it a “terrorist” organisation.

Which brings us to the fact that it’s impossible to reform the police without a system of justice you can trust. Coincidentally the long-awaited inquiry into corruption of the judiciary kicked off yesterday. The fact that one of the best-known victims, former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, will be in attendance as a free man could be seen as encouraging.

But on the other hand, the IGP is the same police officer who carried the infamous stained mattress into court every day during the travesty of Anwar’s trial on charges of sodomy (overturned on appeal).

So, in contravention of the proverbial wisdom that ‘crime doesn’t pay’, it still appears to pay handsomely for anyone with the cash and connections it takes to play the game of cops ‘n robbers, Malaysia style.