A police corporal was charged for homicide of the 14-year-old boy in Shah Alam. If indeed he had fired the gun that killed the boy, he needs to answer for it, since this is how accountability works.

However, if he has done what was taught (or not taught) to him during his training as a policeman, especially as to when to discharge his gun, then he should not be made to shoulder the responsibility alone.

The whole system and the whole policeman training programme should be on trial too. If there is a standard procedure for firing a gun, and this was not taught to the mata-mata, then someone must be held responsible for the negligence.

Someone must be held responsible for the inadequate training of the force.

On the other hand, if the training was adequate and yet this policeman still fired his gun, then the one who is in charge of discipline must be held responsible.

When taken into consideration with the case in Negeri Sembilan where a Mat Rempit was shot, perhaps a culture of arrogance has formed within the police force. And this is dangerous.

An enforcement agency or for that matter any armed unit, which is arrogant will not have discipline and when an enforcement unit does not have discipline, this will be disastrous.

So I think we should not put too much of the blame on the corporal alone. He has to face the music, that is correct. However, the whole system perhaps should be reviewed.

What is glaringly evident is that we need to have better monitoring and accountability in the system.

And nothing can be better than to have a commission (the IPCMC) to monitor the police force, and by doing so, it may be the only way to bring back the glory as well as the respectability of the force.