YOURSAY 'The home minister has an office at Bukit Aman. What more evidence is required to indicate how politics interferes with policing.'

your say KSD: Dear Anonymous Police Officer, praise the Lord for ensuring that there are still good people left in the force.

Your recommendations for reducing crime are tried and tested methods that work all over the world. I still remember a BBC reporter who did a story on crime in Malaysia and how the underworld and police are linked and cooperating with one another.

A gangster in Penang was quoted in the report as saying that if the police were to really do their job, he would be out of business that same day. Tellingly, the report was never refuted by the government.

That's the reality today. Crooked police officers are colluding with crime lords, and the people are paying the price.

Cannon: KSD, cops in cahoots with organised crime - that's racketeering. The TV news and newspaper reports carry stories of police busts. There is typically a big display of the seized contraband from drugs to stolen cars but we hardly see any major kingpin arrested, let alone charged and convicted.

We have a super-efficient Special Branch and its huge experience of infiltration and undercover work. Yet the police is not able to make any headway against organised crime syndicates, apart from catching small-time criminals and small gangs.

The big fishes behind the syndicates are untouched, the kingpins who are engaging in drug and human trafficking, including the smuggling in of illegals. It is open knowledge that illegals and drug addiction are among the major factors pushing up the crime rate.

Instead of tackling organised crime to cut off the root of the problem, PDRM (Royal Malaysian Police) "fights" crime by spinning its statistics to keep the crime rate low. The public is not fooled by the chicanery.

Swipenter: The police is now more visible in escorting BN politicians, VIPs and VVIPs all over town with the outriders blaring their horns, blue and red flashing on top of their police vehicles and outriders roughly shoving other road users aside to clear the road for them to pass through.

For all we know, it might be their wives, sons or daughters on the way to shopping or a party. Everybody must endure traffic jams, but not them.

Harassing the public, opposition politicians and dissidents is also one of their main duties now. Fighting crime has become secondary for the Umno-led government (the home minister has admitted to it) for they believe that high crime rate is just a perception and not a reality.

Umno has bastardised the police force just to serve them and not the public.

Onyourtoes: If the police need those nincompoops from Pemandu to tell them the crimes in the country are too high, then most probably they are nincompoops too. By the time Pemandu knows about the crime rates, I think the whole country would have known by then.

Because of Idris Jala and those in Pemandu, Malaysia has become a NKRA (National Key Result Area) country. Everything is NKRA as if without it, nothing would ever be monitored or evaluated.

What are all the experts within the police force for, sucking eggs? I am sure the police have computer analysts, programmers, criminologists, forensic experts, statisticians, scientists, economists and financial analysts. What do they do?

What about the hierarchy within the police force, from OCPD (district police chief), to deputy IGP to IGP (inspector-general of police) to Home Affairs secretary-general to minister? What do they do?

If they can't monitor, evaluate and assess the state of the police force, what are they there for - wearing nice uniforms to boss around but doing nothing?

AJ: There is no way that the police will change - they have no choice but to manage perception.

The police and the government are married to each other till death. They cannot exist with different ideologies but are forced to compliment each other.

If one of them is corrupt, you don't need to guess which way the other will go. In this case, the government takes the role of ‘husband', what choice does the police have?

Only when this corrupt ‘husband' is dead can there be a new covenant made with a different government.

Unspin: Over the Aidilfitri holidays, there was a police patrol car that went around my neighbourhood blaring its siren presumably to scare off thieves and burglars. If you are a hardened criminal, you would probably laugh at this amateurish attempt to solve crime.

As the writer pointed out, one of the best way to reduce crime is "by removing as many criminals as possible from the society and putting them behind bars".

It is akin to the worms and grasshoppers that are destroying our plants in our garden. If a gardener is hardworking, he/she can easily remove and destroy the pests because there are really not that many pests to start with.

But if he/she let it festers, then the pests will multiply and become a major problem. This is where we are heading with regard to crime in our country.

ACR: Very telling indeed, the home minister has an office at Bukit Aman (federal police headquarters). What more evidence is required to indicate how politics interferes with policing.

And it is a travesty for 41 percent of the force are in management. Fantastic piece, anonymous cop!

Ian2003: At least we have an honest officer here and unfortunately he is not the IGP and if BN continues to govern, he will never be the IGP nor any like-minded police officer such as him will ever be the IGP.

Jkthum: Very well said by the anonymous police officer. In fact, the 31 percent of the budget for "internal security and public order" and 41 percent for "management" can be tremendously cut down and put to good use in fighting crime.

The Special Branch can be closed down. And Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has no business at Bukit Aman. The police should be made independent of government.

Starr: Obviously, the IGP has lots to do to bring the force up to par excellence. To manipulate data for good public relations is criminal in itself, but coming from the law enforcement agencies is criminal twice over.

IloveBN: There is no need to bring in consultants. Service comes from the heart.

Here's from my recent experience. I committed a traffic offence. A police personnel stopped me. He asked me whether I knew the offence. I accepted my mistake and asked for a summons.

He smiled and said you can go. I felt nice and so was he from his facial expression. Yes, it came from both our hearts.

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