Everybody knows that if there were a report card for the police, it would be mostly marked with red ink and it is not difficult to guess why public perception of the force is so negative.

A judge in delivering his verdict on the police shooting of five men in Kelantan about seven years ago remarked that the "police were on a shooting spree". The verdict gives the families of the deceased the green light to sue the force for millions of ringgit for what - interpreting the judge's finding - amounts to criminal homicide.

Several years ago, the police reported that during an interrogation on the seventh floor of Bukit Aman, a detainee jumped to his death in a suicide bid. But the distraught mother of the detainee was able, through lawyer Karpal Singh, to obtain substantial damages for what again was a case of criminal homicide.

These facts are in the records and may be verified. To date, the police have not been able to solve the murders of schoolgirl Audrey Melissa and Dr Joe Fernandez. Again, in a number of ' trial- within-a-trial' cases, it was established that the signed written statements by some of the accused tendered in court were not voluntary but were made under duress.

Under these circumstances, we expect the police to be more modest and circumspect in their public pronouncements. But now we have the federal CID director Musa Hassan speaking about the disappearance of detainee Francis Udayapan from the tightly-guarded Brickfields police headquarters with the same kind infallibility as the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary.

Certainly the public will be excused for thinking that Francis was wearing the mantle of HG Wells' 'invisible man' when he allegedly made his escape.

Suhakam has plenty to do in this tragic case. But will it wake up to its obligations?